


Signing away our hearts

by unnieunnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Chanyeol is made of sunshine and awkwardness, Everything here is cute and mushy, Grumpy Jongdae needs a hug, M/M, Minseok is a menace, Other, Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation, Super soft hours, Very little smut in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-10-11 06:04:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnieunnie/pseuds/unnieunnie
Summary: As non-inheriting royals, they'd always known their duty was to marry-by-treaty whomever they were told to benefit their countries.Jongdae had already done, that, though. And he had no interest in a second husband. He was getting one anyway.Minseok was more than satisfied that his marriage to Jongdae turned into a love match. But if politics were going to make further demands on them, why not turn his duty into pleasure?They were both so perfect. Chanyeol just hoped they might love him someday.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Per the standard EXO-L contract, I've done my mafia fic and my wolf fic. 
> 
> Here's the royalty one. I believe this completes my obligations, and I can move forward to my own AUs henceforth.
> 
> ____

“I hate it,” Jongdae said.

Minseok paused at the third button of his blue velvet waistcoat and tried to sigh softly enough that Dae wouldn’t hear it.

“I know you don’t need me to explain yet again the measurable advantages this marriage will bring in terms of trade value and access to  Tiria ’s ports,” he said.

But gently. Jongdae’s sense of duty would win out in the end; they just had to manage his temper . 

Jongdae  made a low, annoyed sound.

“I know why it’s logical and ‘advantageous’ and  blah fucking blah blah,” he gritted. “I still. Hate. It. You’re my husband, I don’t need another one.”

“But you do need access to the sea.”

“I don’t need a damn thing.”

“Jongdae.”

Minseok finished buttoning his waistcoat and walked over to his pouting spouse. It  was so vexing that Jongdae should be so cute when he pouted. It made remaining stern so difficult. Especially factoring in that he had made almost no effort so far to get dressed and was  sprawled in an armchair wearing nothing more than narrow black trousers and a scowl.

“If you show up looking like you do now, the second child of Tiria will likely demand to hold the wedding before lunch,” he said.

Jongdae stuck out his tongue and made a rude sound.

“Come on, love,” Minseok said.

He leaned in to kiss Jongdae softly.

“This is what we non-inheriting royals do. We all marry each other to  keep the peace and make the best of it.”

“I don’t want anybody but you.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not going anywhere,” Minseok said, tugging Jongdae to his feet.

Minseok pulled the linen shirt up Jongdae’s arms.

“It’s not often I put clothes on you,” he said as he buttoned it up .

That eased the frown on Jongdae’s face somewhat.

“You know there are infinite ways for this to work out fine, Jongdae. Tiria is a civilized place. Their royal family hasn’t had a scandal in more years than your  fa ther has been alive, and even then it was merely a matter of transferring inheritance to a younger sibling. We’ll get to know him, and we’ll find the best compromise for all of us.”

“I don’t compromise on you,” Jongdae growled, though his hand was relaxed while Minseok set the emerald cufflinks in his cuffs.

“Of course not,” Minseok said. 

It was easy to pet Jongdae into a better mood, on top of being a wholly pleasant experience for Minseok himself to dress Jongdae in his narrow suit of black with green accents: a high-collared jacket that buttoned over his chest and swept into a swallowtail hem, which did a wonderful job of highlighting his slim waist and the surprising breadth of his shoulders, with green silk lining the tails, the emerald cufflinks, small emerald studs in his ears. With his hair swept partway up off his forehead, his face looked angular and spare. Minseok couldn’t resist cupping his cheeks and leaning in for a hungry kiss.

“I guess that means I pass muster,” Jongdae murmured.

Minseok batted away the hand creeping down his front toward his  trousers.

“You look deceptively elegant,” Minseok said , and  slipped his own sapphire  earrings in, one of which hung to brush his shoulder.

He waited.

“Hey!”

Minseok grinned as he slipped on his own grey  cutaway  jacket.

Jongdae’s pout this time was obviously fake, and he grabbed Minseok’s hand as they stepped out into the hall.  Baekhyun, as ever, materialized from the shadows to follow them.  Minseok glanced back : Baekhyun’s own formal wear was less flashy than their own , though he  looked handsome enough to  blend seamlessly into any  high-level gathering. He winked at Minseok.

The closer they got to the  king’s solarium where they would meet their new spouse, the more tightly Jongdae gripped his hand , until Minseok stopped and pulled until Jongdae looked at him.

“Take a breath, love,” he said.

Jongdae looked down at their linked hands.

“You’ve met him, right?” he asked quietly.

Minseok looked over and met Baekhyun’s sympathetic gaze.

“I’m not sure that it counts, given how young we were,” Minseok said, stroking his thumb across the top of Jongdae’s hand. “But he was a very earnest little boy who wanted desperately for me to like his puppy. And when he realized that I was afraid of dogs, he cried.”

Baekhyun laughed.

“That’s what all the reports say about him.  Prince Soft-Heart, they call him in the gossip papers.”

“So you see? We’ll be fine,” Minseok said. “As long as he grew into his own ears.”

“Um, about that,” Baekhyun said, and laughed again.

“Gods above and below,” Jongdae groaned .

But at least it meant that they walked into the solarium smiling.

♕ ♕♕

“Stop shuffling your feet,” Yoora hissed. “You know better.”

Chanyeol planted his feet and  clenc hed his hands together behind his back so hard that they hurt. He did know better, he’d been trained better, but for the sake of the wide salt sea,  it wasn’t every day  one  agreed to  marry two people so handsome that they should technically be impossible.

Assuming, of course, that their ferrotypes were good likenesses. He knew his own ferrotypes tended to flatter him, that he looked better in stillness, clean and calm and unlike his usual untidy whirlwind self. And without his spectacles. Which he wasn’t wearing, so everything in the room had a fuzzy aura around it, and he had to depend on his sister’s watchfulness in the event of anything small and dark near the floor.

She wouldn’t let him trip over anything. Then she’d have to kill him, and then they wouldn’t have anybody to marry to Viridan and Isatis to make them safe against the martial stirrings on their southern border. And then she wouldn’t have a country to rule, some undetermined time in the future.

Chanyeol sighed.

Yoora squeezed his arm.

“You look  lovely,” he whispered, meaning it but also so she’d smile at him.

Living in a coastal country, humid and windy, their styles tended to be looser than those of these inland, rocky nations. Yoora, in her bright yellow silk dress that flowed down from her shoulders, was certainly more comfortable than Her Majesty of Viridan and the other ladies, in corsets and brocade. As Her Majesty had very kindly said when she had asked Yoora to turn and show off her gown.

Surely anyone so kind would have a kind son. Surely a kind son would only have married someone similarly kind. The princes were famous in the gossip papers for their love match – a treaty-marriage taking its ideal form. Everyone loved to read about their devotion to one another.

So surely they would be kind to someone coming in under the same circumstances.

And not, for example,  resent the intrusion.

Yoora huffed and pulled him around to tug at the  ridiculously large collar of his ridiculous coat, which looked stupidly old-fashioned compared to all the narrow suits on all the other men in the room under the age of 60. How had he let anybody talk him into satin knee-breeches , much less enameled shoe buckles? Reed and marsh, he had bowed chicken legs, and here they were out on display for everyone to see under his  hose.

“Calm. Down.” Yoora mouthed.

Right. Focus on the good things. That he knew the rust color of his outfit flattered him, for example. That Yoora’s maid had worked some kind of magic on his hair so that it fluffed up and hid his ears.

That if he needed to turn tail and run, his legs were so much longer than those of any of the locals that he’d make it home before they reached their own border.

Th is image was enough to make him lower his shoulders and smile , feeling slightly less dire for the minute or so before the princes walked in, and then he lost his senses all over again.

The ferrotypes hadn’t lied.

Except, maybe, in being slightly less flattering than real life.

They looked taller from a distance, both of them slim and long-legged, striding easily into the room with their hands linked and grins on their faces, so confident and graceful that every eye turned to them. Chanyeol felt himself blush immediately, and it only became worse the closer they got to him and their features became more clear: Jongdae’s sharp edges and Minseok’s heart-shaped face. The wicked curve of Jongdae’s mouth and Minseok’s full lips. Jongdae’s high cheekbones and Minseok’s beautiful grey eyes , angled like a cat’s .

The way those two sets of strong brows raised as they walked toward him,  tilting their chins up.

Either the surprise, or their tightly clasped hands, or the fact that they both looked like they had stepped straight out of some fairytale made every word Chanyeol had ever learned fly right out of his head. Somewhere along the line he had learned a hundred formal greetings suitable for people of his own rank. He definitely remembered practicing a very pretty speech about his thankfulness that they had accepted him and his hopes for their future happiness.

He had memorized it so carefully . But the inside of his head at the moment  contained only the sound of a gale-force wind. And Jongdae’s eyebrows were starting to drift toward one another.

“You’ve certainly grown since the last time we met,” Minseok said after a century-long pause .

His voice was light and slightly burred, and the sympathy in his expression broke the levee in Chanyeol’s head.

“You do remember!” he said, grinning with sheer relief. “It was so long ago, I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

Minseok smiled at him; Jongdae merely looked surprised. 

♕ ♕♕

Jongdae knew that the arrangement was long sealed. The opportunity to refuse – probably always an illusion anyway – had passed months previously, long before he had even pressed his seal into the puddle of hot wax on the treaty documents.

But it had been easy to put out of his mind when it  seemed like a nebulous future problem. A vague notion of a seaside estate, and Minseok in the sun, his skin tasting of salt.  An easy solution , for the length of their lives, at least, to his country’s problem of overseas exports and imports.

He wasn’t stupid, but it occurred to him when he had finally looked at the ferrotype of the man with the cocky grin and large eyes that his ability to selectively ignore things he didn’t like was maybe a little too developed. Because it hadn’t been until that instant that it hit him that an actual person was going to intrude on their daily lives, possibly even with the expectation of intruding into their bed, and – 

What if he was awful?

What if that arrogant smile was indicative of his personality? The multitude of ways this could go wrong had flooded Jongdae all at once, until he didn’t know whether he dreaded more that Chanyeol of Tiria would be some lunkhead full of his own importance, or rude, or cruel – or that he would be as lovely, as brilliant, as much of a surprise as Minseok had been.

Honestly, both options were equally bad.

So yes. He knew he had acted like a child for the past two weeks of preparations, and that his mother was nearly ready to pull his hair with frustration. Even Minseok’s considerable patience had started to strain around the edges. But Jongdae crawled with worry. He wanted to hide Minseok in a closet to keep him away from this interloper’s eyes. Or to throw Minseok over his shoulder and bolt for the airyard, stow away on an airship headed to the edge of the world, and never be seen again.

The only problem with that being that Minseok was stronger than he was and wouldn’t put up with such nonsense. Add to this his own pesky sense of national and familial duty, which just flat out sucked.

So he knew perfectly well what Minseok was doing, buttering him up and distracting him. Preventing him from starting an international scandal with his temper. Minseok knew him better than anybody; Jongdae figured his nervousness was obvious to his husband.

And then they’d walked through the door to see – a scarecrow, apparently, dressed in clothes  thirty  years out of date, staring at them both with his mouth open. The whole crowd of dignitaries from Tiria was tall, but Chanyeol was the tallest by a lot, pale and with an excessive amount of red-tinged, artificially curled hair flung out from his head in all directions. Jongdae felt sorry for him at first, obviously too nervous to cope, looking faintly ridiculous, but the longer the silence went on, Jongdae wondered what in the three icy hells they taught their royalty over on the coast that Chanyeol couldn’t muster a single word.

Then Minseok extended a verbal hazel wand of peace. Chanyeol’s smile dawned across his face, and he spoke in a deep, warm baritone.

“Oh, damn,” Jongdae thought. “Damn, damn, damn.”

H is father’s chief minister stepped forward, saying,

“Jongdae, son of Viridan and Minseok, son of Isatis and son by treaty of Viridan , meet your intended spouse by treaty, Chanyeol, son of Tiria,”

and the formal introductions began.


	2. Chapter 2

The formal introductions took most of the afternoon, as every single title of every single person present must be listed, every person bowed to. Then they had to read the entire treaty contract, and all three potential spouses had to agree to each term, despite having wrangled through them months before and all three seals being affixed at the bottom. Minseok hoped that Chanyeol didn’t notice how curt Jongdae’s “I accept” was. He hoped Jongdae _did_ notice how eager Chanyeol’s was.

He curled his hand around Jongdae’s elbow to comfort him. It was tricky: Minseok knew it was tricky. He and Jongdae had fallen for one another during their wedding trip and had had three years to themselves to indulge in happiness. In that time, Minseok had learned how prickly Jongdae could be when he felt pressured or cornered, and he knew how possessive Jongdae was of himself.

No one in the world could’ve walked into this treaty-marriage in a way that would’ve set Jongdae’s mind at ease. But Minseok had always held in the back of his mind that he had to be prepared. Isatis was as small as Tiria, after all. For five generations, since the last war, the sons and second daughters of his family had been married off to broker peace or trade deals, to give the reign of each queen such security as could be had for one small nation of foothills and forests, stuffed between Tiria’s coastline and the high plains of Viridan, with its airships, its armies, and its three teeming cities.

Poor Chanyeol looked frightful in his old-fashioned suit , and Minseok thought he must know it, the way he kept pulling at his cuffs and his hand kept drifting upward like he wanted to rub at his hair. Minseok thought he probably didn’t know that the tips of his ears turned red every time he looked at them.

Finally all of the formal nonsense was out of the way. The room took a collective breath of relief , even if Minseok knew that Her Majesty’s breath was nothing like the one she wanted, in that formal gown. 

“ Now that the official business is done, let’s leave the young people to get to know one another better before dinner,” Jongdae’s father said .

Jongdae’s mother pounced on Chanyeol’s sister immediately,  making Chanyeol blink rapidly and hold out one hand, but in a bustle of low murmurs and rustled clothing, they were left alone.

Minseok watched Jongdae watch Chanyeol stare at the floor.

When Chanyeol started to shuffle his feet, Minseok took pity on him. He had no plans to take pity on Jongdae when they discussed this later.

“What would you like?” he asked. “A tour of the palace? Or to walk outside, perhaps?  It’s quite hot outside, but I imagine you’re used to heat. We haven’t done anything with your rooms yet, but we can take you to them and talk about how you’d like them decorated?”

Chanyeol’s face turned dark red, and he opened and closed his mouth several times.

“Chanyeol,” Minseok said.  “Neither of us is going to bite you. ”

Interestingly, that seemed to make Chanyeol’s discomfort worse.  Well. Th is was an entire line of discussion he hadn’t been brave enough to broach with Jongdae yet, but  one presumed they were going to be married for quite a long time indeed, there would be sufficient opportunity to work things out, in whatever fashion would be most pleasing to everyone.

“Please don’t stand there feeling mortified . What would you like to do?”

“ I want so desperately to get out of these stupid clothes,” Chanyeol said, barely above a whisper.

Jongdae laughed.

♕♕♕

The whole thing was so exciting and so terrible all at the same time.  In the deepest, most trembling part of his gut, Chanyeol had been sure that in the middle of the formal agreements they’d turn him down and send him packing , but they hadn’t. Jongdae had sounded a little sharp at times, but he had accepted all the terms . Minseok had accepted all the terms. Nobody could back out of anything now, he was definitely going to  marry them.

Terrifying.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the way his shoes pinched his toes, the waistband of the breeches cut into his waist, and the coat weighed down his shoulders, Chanyeol probably would’ve embarrassed his nation and, worse, his sister by bursting into tears at the end of it. He was going to marry them. Chanyeol, second child of Tiria, “Prince Soft-Heart” ( so embarrassing , even if it was true), was going to marry these two angelic beings of concentrated perfection.

Who, as it happened, were completely in love with one another and probably wanted a clumsy, outsized intruder about as much as they wanted the pox.

What in the eight winds was he going to do?

Hang on for dear life and hope that maybe one or both of them would like him a little bit eventually, he supposed.

So when Jongdae laughed at his laughable  statement , Chanyeol wished for the world to end around him and put him out of his misery, until Jongdae followed it up with,

“Min and I happen to have a miracle worker on staff. Let’s see what he can do for you.”

♕♕♕

It was easy for Jongdae to set aside his nervousness and trepidation in the face of how miserable Chanyeol looked, staring at the floor cycling through every shade of red in the palette. And, of course, if they got him out of that horrible suit, they wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

Chanyeol tripped twice on the walk to their quarters. Jongdae wondered whether he was more used to living on a ship or some such, that he should be so astonishingly clumsy.

It didn’t bode well for dancing at the wedding  dinner . Maybe he and Min could get steel-reinforced shoes.

These thoughts quelled his momentary sense of ease. By the time he opened the door for his spouse and his intended, Jongdae was ready once again to chew the frame off the wall. He waved for Baekhyun to follow them in.

“Oh!” 

Chanyeol startled dramatically when he caught sight of Baekhyun.

“Where did you come from?”

Jongdae gritted his teeth. Clumsy, inattentive, socially awkward. Was Chanyeol a simpleton? But Baekhyun grinned.

“Please meet Byun Baekhyun,” Minseok said smoothly. “Our closest aide, if not technically our chief of staff. He serves in part as attendant and bodyguard, so you’ll come to know him well.”

“Even your bodyguards are small,” Chanyeol said, and then recoiled in horror from himself, which was really something to witness.

“Baekhyun and Minseok could each bend you in thirds backwards before you had the faintest idea what was happening,” Jongdae said, not bothering to disguise the chill in his tone.

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol said. “I keep acting like a complete fool. I’m very nervous, I meant no offense.”

“None taken,” Baekhyun said. “I’m just grateful you haven’t fainted; it would be my job to catch you, and I prefer to remain three-dimensional.”

Easy for Baekhyun to be nice to him. He wasn’t going to have to marry the man.

“Would you please send Joonmyun to us? And perhaps some tea? I don’t know about Chanyeol, but I could do with some fortification, and Jongdae’s obviously cranky , ” Minseok said.

Baekhyun grinned on his way out, Jongdae supposed. He didn’t know for sure – he was too busy glaring at Minseok.


	3. Chapter 3

Minseok could feel a headache gathering behind his left eyebrow. This beginning wasn’t a catastrophe, but it looked to be headed in that direction, if Chanyeol couldn’t gather himself and Jongdae couldn’t stop letting his trepidation manifest as coldness.

Well. He would do what he could to ease the way, but they were grown men. They’d have to govern themselves.

“I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of either standing or remaining so thoroughly dressed any longer,” he said.

Such relief to slip off his jacket, untie his cravat, and fall into a chair.

Somewhat startling, perhaps, that Chanyeol stepped out of his shoes and dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor.

“I’m sorry, this is more usual at home,” he mumbled when he caught Jongdae’s sharp glance.

“Of course you must be comfortable,” Minseok said.

He and Jongdae had a silent conversation of eyebrows, during which Minseok was disappointed to find his husband intractable on the topic of calming the hells down.

“Take off your coat, Jongdae, you know you’ll only lounge sideways in a chair, and you don’t want to look rumpled at dinner,” he snapped.

Jongdae glared at him. He also did as he was told.

“It’s a beautiful coat,” Chanyeol said wistfully to the rug, whose pile he was apparently trying to untwist. “You both look so. You look very fine.”

This time, Minseok’s pointed glance to Jongdae was met with a glimmer of abashedness.

“Is that the style, in Tiria?” Minseok asked. “I'm afraid we should’ve done more research.”

That Chanyeol peered at him with a weary sort of “are you kidding?” expression encouraged Minseok that somewhere inside all that body mass was an actual spine.

“Of course not. I look like somebody’s grandfather,” Chanyeol said.

Jongdae snorted. Chanyeol latched onto the sound, turning wide-eyed to him and leaning forward. Minseok suspected that Chanyeol had no idea how positive a reaction Jongdae’s rapid blinking was.

“It’s very hot at home, you know. And windy all the time. Our formal wear is a lot less – starchy. I was afraid I wouldn’t look. Argh, oceans below, I look like an idiot.”

Minseok was careful not to look Jongdae in the eye and distract him from the endearing misery of their fiancé on the floor.

“You picked a good color,” Jongdae said. “It flatters you.”

Minseok sighed inwardly. It was the merest, tiniest scrap of a peace offering. But he supposed a mere, tiny scrap was better than nothing.

“Thanks,” Chanyeol mumbled, back to staring at the rug.

Joonmyun bustled in, his matrimonial entourage trailing him as usual, to break up their silence before it could grow too oppressive. He was so entirely correct in all matters all the time that he didn’t even appear to notice that Chanyeol was standing in his stocking feet, as if knobby feet in fine silk hose trod their carpets all day long.

“Highness,” he said with a bow, “as I know we will have many years of close acquaintance, I thought I would wait to introduce myself in surroundings more comfortable than the solarium. I’m Kim Joonmyun, the princes’ chief of staff. You’ve met my husband Byun Baekhyun, I understand. Please let me present my other husband, Zhang Yixing.”

“Physician by trade, musician by passion, Highness. Please prepare yourself for a thorough grilling about your nation’s folk songs on the first available rainy night.”

Minseok watched Chanyeol stumble back a step, staring at the trio of smiles (two warm, one wry) in front of him.

“You  – eh? Why is? All? What instr – I mean, very glad  – “

Chanyeol stopped, closed his eyes, took a breath, and smoothed his hands on his coat, then shook his head. Adorable.

He bowed.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said. “Please, all of you, let’s know each other by our names in private, if we’re to be friends. Dr. Zhang, I’ll be glad to tell you anything you want to know about the music of my country, I’m a musician as well.”

That hadn’t been in any of the dossiers they’d received. Minseok looked over at Jongdae, who was watching with  what he thought was his poker face, the dear thing.

Yixing’s high-pitched laugh rang out.

“Wonderful! Though of course you can’t say in one breath that I should use your name and in the next call me ‘doctor’.”

Chanyeol grinned. Minseok let himself lean back in his chair and exhale some of the afternoon’s stress.

“Fair enough. But your high – um, Jongdae? Minseok?” Chanyeol asked, turning to face them. “Why do you need both a bodyguard and a personal physician?”

“Mostly because their lives would fall apart without Joon, and he comes as part of a matched set,” Baekhyun said. “And also because Jongdae has been tagging along after me since he first learned to walk. If neither I nor Min is in the room, I’m not sure he knows how to breathe on his own.”

Yixing drowned out Jongdae’s protest with,

“They’re actually cousins. Baekhyun’s really a duke, not that he'll ever admit it.”

Already the influence of such cheerfulness had Chanyeol looking less likely to jump out the window and flee home. The knock and resulting two carts laden with food and tea only added to the comfort. Chanyeol watched how their friends dragged over chairs without a second thought. Minseok pulled him into the closest chair.

“No, Chanyeol, you’ll be made to fend for yourself in this horde soon enough. Today, let me treat you like the honored guest you are.”

♕♕♕

On one hand, the ease with which everyone in the room crowded around the food, chatting across at one another, let Chanyeol exhale for what felt like the first time all day. On the other hand, it made him desperately miss home.

“Green tea or black? How many sugars?” Minseok murmured at him.

That face so close to his, like a painting brought to life around those  beautiful , warm eyes, was almost more than Chanyeol could bear. He would see this face for the rest of his life. He would be married to this lovely man, with his kindness and his calm.

Perhaps one day he would even be permitted to kiss that full,  smiling mouth.

“Black and one,” he croaked.

“Here, let’s address your problem before we get too comfortable,” Joonmyun said.

He made Chanyeol stand and measured his outseam, shoulders, and arms.

“I’ll let the tailor measure your inseam, you and I aren’t that close yet,” he said, and patted Chanyeol’s arm.

No tailor alive could produce an entire suit for anyone bigger than an infant in the scant hours before dinner. But while  Chanyeol sat with  a  beautiful little teacup on his knee, he listened to everyone else in the room argue over miniature sandwiches about which resident diplomats might be large enough to assist.

“Ah, yes, I know Maxim Maximovich,” Yixing said. “He has a splendid baritone. He’s stout, but tall enough to suit. I’ll go ask him, let me have the paper with the measurements.”

“And I’m off to the tailors to have them  prepare . Baek, come with me so you can fetch Chanyeol to his sister's suite as soon as everything’s ready, will you?”

And with a whirl as loud as the one that had brought them in, they were all gone again.

♕♕♕

Jongdae knew Minseok was  pissed off at him. He was great at  pretending to be smooth and unruffled, but Jongdae had had three years’ practice as the recipient of  th at combination of  one quirked eyebrow, a quick purse of the lips , and the very slightest narrowing of those catlike eyes.

Maybe – maybe – he had a point. Chanyeol was awkward as a new lamb, but he seemed to have no acquaintance with malice or guile. He had leaned toward Yixing’s good humor like a plant seeking light. The few times he had smiled looked like the sun tipping across the horizon at dawn.

Except:  once before, the two of them had found themselves abruptly married for political gain and then, just as abruptly,  intrigued, attracted, in love.

It was easy, between two.

Jongdae watched Minseok fix Chanyeol a cup of tea, hand him a plate of  food, and thought about all the ways it could go so wrong, among three.


	4. Chapter 4

If nothing else, it was pleasant to simply sit quietly and drink tea between the afternoon’s excitement and the evening to come. Jongdae and Chanyeol were both brooding, but if neither of them elected to speak of it, there was nothing Minseok could do, so he sipped his tea and looked out their expansive windows across the broad green plains toward the grey shadows in the distance that were a mountain range that very nearly touched the sky.

Jongdae stood suddenly, Minseok presumed to pace. He could also imagine that such would send their guest to a precipice of anxiety.

“Ah, of course, my love,” he said. “We should show Chanyeol his rooms.”

Two sets of eyebrows suggested that he had taken leave of his senses. Minseok stood and refilled his teacup. It would do well to have something to occupy his hands.

He gestured for Jongdae to lead the way. That much, at least, was within Jongdae’s power, despite his agitation.

Their sitting room, large but comfortable with book-lined walls, sat between two bedrooms. Jongdae led them to the door in the eastern wall and the sparse room on the other side of it. Chanyeol padded in, still in his stocking feet, squinting around.

Out of those ridiculous shoes, he was still tall, but to a less alarming degree. Jongdae’s head just topped his shoulder, Minseok’s own slightly less. A manageable height. He looked rather less than happy, craning his neck to look at the room.

“I know it’s bare,” Jongdae said.

Sounding, finally, as if he cared what their intended thought.

“Oh!” Chanyeol said. “Oh, yes, you said you didn’t want to make changes until you know what I like.”

Minseok wanted to smile at them, both so hapless and stiff.

“It’s just. How do you keep a room this large warm?”

Minseok caught Jongdae’s eye. How indeed? They were both sons of chilly countries, used to sweaters and huddling by fires. Jongdae was fond of long baths.

Minseok watched Chanyeol approach the north-facing window, looked at his fine profile and the set of his shoulders. Chanyeol knuckled his eyes; he looked tired. But he was sweet-natured and handsome, and Minseok could imagine it to be a pleasant winter project, dreaming up ways to keep their thin-blooded, coastal spouse warm.

“This is nice,” Chanyeol said, leaning down to touch his fingers to the long stone bench that ran the length of the window.

“Are you much of a reader?” Jongdae asked. “We can have a cushion made for this, to make it comfortable.”

Chanyeol twisted his fingers together, staring at Jongdae.

“I am,” he said. “I mean. I’m not a scholar, though I do like to read. It could be nice to sit here and play my guitar.”

“Consider it done,” Jongdae said.

And if he didn’t look at Chanyeol when he said it, Minseok knew what that low growl meant. His poor husband. Always overthinking things, when this could be so pleasant and simple. They were three princes. Three handsome men in the prime of life. How very easy this could all be, if only they would simply stop worrying so much.

“What colors would you like?” Minseok asked. “Do you prefer a more comfortable look? I’m guessing you don’t want anything too formal.”

“No,” Chanyeol said. “I like. I don’t know. I like the color of the sea during a storm, and sunset with clouds on the horizon. And – and old, well-varnished wood. But really, I’ll be happy with whatever you choose, I’m sure, I can’t imagine that you’d pick anything ugly, when you’re so – “

He was staring at the floor again.

Minseok looked at Jongdae and let the silence drag out.

“Of course we’ll do our best, we want you to be comfortable,” Jongdae said.

“And happy,” Minseok said.

Jongdae blushed.

“And happy,” he said.

“I bought a house,” Chanyeol said, after a long, uncomfortable moment looking back and forth between them.

“It’s nothing like this. You’d probably call my parents’ palace a travesty of the word. But the house is. I think it’s very pretty. It’s right by the sea. You can hear the waves from every bedroom, I checked. And.”

He cleared his throat.

“Jongdae. They said you paint. I had our court painter make sure there was a room that might suit you.”

Jongdae startled.

“And Minseok, I didn’t know whether you might like to have your own mounts sent for our third-year in Tiria. Horses are too personal for me to presume. But there’s a lovely stable, I’m sure my own horse is doing nothing but getting fat and lazy while I’m here.”

Well. “Prince Soft-Heart” certainly did seem to be a sincere epithet.

“That sounds lovely,” Jongdae said in a gravelly voice.

“Indeed it does,” Minseok said. “I already look forward to seeing it.”

That made Chanyeol smile again, small and shy. Surely even Jongdae’s stubbornness couldn’t last in the face of all this.

“What does your room look like?” Chanyeol asked in a low voice when he stepped up next to Minseok on their way back to the sitting room.

“We share,” Jongdae called back, not even turning his head.

And Minseok watched a mask drop over Chanyeol’s face, bland and pleasant. A mask all three of them were carefully trained to wear. Dammit.

“Of course,” Chanyeol said.

“Oh good, there you are. I’m here to fetch the tallest and newest family member away to pins and needles,” Baekhyun said.

Minseok guessed that his spouse and his fiancé were as relieved as he was. But he rather thought he was he only one whose relief would take the form of throttling royalty.

Chanyeol’s bow to himself was accompanied by that shy smile. His bow to Jongdae was as formal as the one he received back.

Gods below. Minseok poured himself another cup of tea.

♕♕♕

“Ready to die of awkwardness yet?” Baekhyun asked once they were a ways down the hall.

Chanyeol peered at him. He wanted to work on good faith that he had jumped in with good people. But it was so easy to make mistakes. Baekhyun patted his arm.

“I’m the one who did most of the research, you know, when the King was thinking of making an offer for you. They’re as close a family as yours is, Highness. A standard trade treaty was always an option, if either side worried that the three of you might not get along.”

Chanyeol rubbed his nose. That was a comfort, even if, from their side, needing the protection of an ally powerful enough to keep their southern neighbor at bay made a “standard trade agreement” no good.

“So you think we might?” he said.

“I think you have a very real chance.”

Anyhow, it was an immense relief when Baekhyun left him at the door with a salute, and Chanyeol could fall through, literally, to rest his head on Yoora’s shoulder. She squeezed him briefly.

“Not quite yet, baby brother. We have to get these nice tailors busy first.”

Chanyeol straightened, took a breath, and endured the barely-suppressed scorn/mirth of the three tailors. He stepped behind a screen and finally out of his old-man's outfit into a suit that would fit a manatee.

But at least it was long enough in the arms and legs.

“Oh dear,” Yoora said when he stepped back out.

“Not to worry,” one of the tailors said. “Cutting it down won’t take any time at all. We only need to pin it quickly, if His Highness would please tell us how, er, slim-fitting he’d like it to be in the trousers.”

Yoora snorted.

“Please, I just don’t want to look like an idiot,” Chanyeol said.

All three tailors paused and looked him up and down. Two of the three smiled.

“We would never allow it,” one, the woman, said. “You’ll look splendid.”

“The base material we have to work with is excellent, after all,” the not-smiling one said.

Yoora winked and nodded at him.

It was an awfully nice suit, of wool with something nubbly and slightly shiny in the weave that he assumed was silk, in a lovely color like a full glass of red wine. He had a decent pair of shoes and a good linen shirt to wear under it, maybe with a loose scarf like he wore at home, so that no one could mess up the cravat knot.

Yixing was ushered in, and Chanyeol made very ineffective introductions from his perch on a footstool, surrounded by pins and trying not to move.

“What a flattering color, I knew that would do,” he said.

“Please give – was it Maxim Maximovich? – my gratitude. What thanks can I send him?”

Yoora nodded her approval. Yixing grinned.

“He’s extremely fond of spirits.”

When Chanyeol directed a servant to have two cases of their country’s fortified wine sent to this generous person, Yixing laughed.

“Highness, is he flirting, or is this how he is all the time?”

Then it was Yoora’s turn to laugh.

“I’m not sure my brother knows how to flirt.”

Chanyeol was afraid to scowl, in case he moved and got poked in eight hundred different places.

“Let’s leave the coat long,” one of the tailors murmured. “He’ll look as tall as a ship’s mast.”

There was a lot of humming around pin-filled mouths.

Yixing left with the tailors, after a very slow and slightly scratchy process with all three of them behind the screen, peeling the pinned suit carefully off of him and Chanyeol trying not to blush so hard at so much of himself showing in front of three strangers that he lost consciousness.

He was so glad to shrug into a warm robe and collapse onto a proper pile of cushions. He was even more glad when Yoora had some wine and a hot cloth brought in, sent everyone else away, and tugged his head into her lap.

“Your poor eyes look so tired,” she said, and laid the cloth over them.

Chanyeol sighed.

“Was it awful?”

“I don’t know,” Chanyeol groaned, groping around in the air until she caught his hand.

“I can’t tell whether Jongdae’s nervous and snappish or just dislikes me. But he’s obviously unhappy.”

“Well,” Yoora sniffed. “He should’ve worked that out with himself some time in the past half-year. Leaving it until now to parade in front of you shows a remarkable lack of politeness.”

Chanyeol had to grin. And he didn’t disagree.

“Minseok’s perfectly lovely,” he said.

“There you go, then. Everything we know about them suggests they’re crazy for each other, so Minseok’ll work on your little spitfire and make sure he comes around.”

“But that’s the trouble, isn’t it? You know if Viridan had a third child they’re the one I’d be marrying right now. Minseok and Jongdae don’t want an intrusion on their happiness.”

“You’re not going to intrude,” Yoora said gently.

“I know that,” Chanyeol said. “I’d rather throw myself into the sea than try to mess up what they have.”

Not that he could help sighing at how lonely that sounded. Yoora combed his hair with her free hand.

“It’ll be nice if you can get in on that happiness with them, though, won’t it?”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said, feeling hollow and miserable and a little hot around his already-tired eyes.

“I certainly hope for you that it works out that way, Yeollie,” she said.

Chanyeol turned his head to press into her belly, and she gave him a minute before he felt it move with her laughter.

“I’d just hate to think that you might spend your whole life a virgin, with no carnal knowledge of anything other than your right hand.”

Winds, sisters were the worst.

“I beg your pardon, I use my left,” he said.

“What a coincidence, so do I!”

Their entourage, all of whom who had known them their entire lives, shuffled back through the door at the ensuing shrieks and found, as usual, that Chanyeol was on the losing end of the tickling contest. As usual, teasing with Yoora made Chanyeol feel fathoms better, and he agreed readily to the idea of popping into a bath, especially with the added treat of his spectacles dangled in front of him and the chance to actually see the world around him for a bit.

By the time Baekhyun brought the now-much-smaller suit, the spectacles had been carefully tucked away again and the tinted powder reapplied to his face. Thankfully no one tried to curl his hair again, just brush it until it shone and push it up off his face.

“Vastly improved,” Baekhyun said at the sight of Chanyeol in the _very_ slim trousers and thigh-length coat. “Do you want me to tie that cravat, or are you trying to look like a slightly dangerous foreigner come to open our minds to new and fun ideas?”

Chanyeol looked at Yoora.

“Definitely the latter,” she said.

She was in pale sea blue, a waft of transparent silk layers that made her look like she was floating, and which glowed when he stood next to her in his dark red. For once, he even felt like he rather complemented her.

“Highnesses, you look wonderful,” Baekhyun said. “Let’s go knock the very hair off some princely heads.”

Chanyeol grimaced, but Yoora grinned and held out her hand for his arm so they could go to dinner.

♕♕♕

The door shut behind Baekhyun and Chanyeol, and Jongdae waited for his lecture.

He watched Minseok pour another cup of tea and sit, staring out the window to drink it. With no lecture forthcoming.

When he couldn’t take the silence anymore, Jongdae poured his own cup and sat opposite Minseok.

The silence went on.

“Okay, look,” he said.

And then he couldn’t say anything else, because the expression Minseok turned on him was absolutely thunderous.

“Go on,” Min growled after a moment.

“Maybe he’s not – so terrible.”

Oh, that wasn’t going to help.

Minseok set his teacup down with a rattle.

It definitely didn’t help.

“Jongdae of Viridan,” Min said through gritted teeth. “You are a prince of the realm. You are literally a trained diplomat. And you have treated that perfectly nice man, who is just as stuck as we are, with less courtesy than you show to the person who cleans our water closet.”

Which was awful.

And true.

Gods above and below. Jongdae set his own cup down and put his hands in his hair.

If only Min hadn’t met him before. If only Min hadn’t made him smile like that, the first time they spoke. If only he hadn’t grinned at their friends, and Min hadn’t leaned in so close to hand him a cup of tea.

If only he weren’t so nice, and his hands weren’t so ridiculously big. And his smile looked slightly less like something Jongdae wanted to see again.

If only they could’ve just been left alone to be happy.

He groaned.

“You owe him an apology,” Minseok said, more gently.

Jongdae looked up at him, that beautiful face that made every day worth waking to, the greatest surprise of his life.

“You too,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Jongdae felt worse than ever for a couple of heartbeats, when Minseok’s chin dipped and his expression softened into sympathy.

“Come here.”

Sitting on Min’s lap, face pressed against his neck, was a place where Jongdae could let out his shuddering breath and admit to himself that he was just plain frightened.

“No matter what happens, we go through this together,” Minseok said. “We agreed, right?”

Jongdae nodded. Yes, together. It was the thought of anything not-together that he couldn’t bear.

“But wouldn’t it be better, if ‘together’ could mean the three of us?”

Jongdae tried to pull away, with no success.

“Jongdae. Don’t act as if you’ve forgotten how we started.”

Except that he had. Why think about those days, when he had been grumpy and rude, since he was so happy now? Why remember the day he had shouted at his brother about the stupidity of being married, and to a man no less, for mere reasons of economics, then barreling out of the room straight into Minseok and Baekhyun: one his intended, one married to a man?

“Gods, it’s the same thing,” he muttered.

Minseok’s hand stroked his back.

“It is, so I understand. But can't you do better now?”

Jongdae sat up and looked down.

“You like him.”

Minseok shrugged.

“I like what I’ve seen of him. He’s unpolished but warm, and I know you well, Jongdae, you’ve definitely noticed that he’s handsome.”

He reached up to turn Jongdae’s chin back around to look him in the eye again.

“My love. My highest hope for our marriage was that we would eventually become friends. That we have more surprised everyone, including us. You know that. We can’t predict how either of us will come to feel for Chanyeol. But we know that we will marry him. That we will live with him, and be tied to him for the rest of our lives. Please, Jongdae. Find a way to believe in how much I love you, enough so that you don’t destroy any chance of some variety of friendliness with him before it has even begun.”

“I’m sorry,” Jongdae said.

He pulled Min’s mouth to his in a sloppy kiss.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said.

Because it was true. Sometimes he didn’t believe it, sometimes he would wake in the middle of the night certain that every shred of this happiness was a dream, sometimes he wanted to scream at Minseok not to go riding, not to box, not to leave the safety of their room, because it all felt so fragile. Because it could be taken away at any moment.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Because Minseok deserved to be believed. He deserved trust.

And he was right: Jongdae wasn’t blind. He could see how handsome Chanyeol was, how sweet. The very things that made him dangerous.

“I love you,” Minseok said. “I keep telling you, and you keep pretending that I don’t mean it when you know that I do.”

“I love you too,” Jongdae said under his ear.

“I know, beloved. I know that you do. Jongdae. There’s no room for doubt here, hm? And look, now we’re both rumpled and have to change anyway. Let me see what I can do to put you in a better frame of mind.”

Certainly Minseok sucking him dry always did wonders for his mood. If only they’d thought of it earlier. Jongdae was ready to extend a sincere apology to Chanyeol by dinnertime, now that his spine no longer crawled with tension.

“Son,” his mother murmured at him while she kissed his cheek. “Were you nice to that poor boy? I wanted to sweep him up and carry him away this morning, he looked so mortified.”

Jongdae kissed her hand.

“I’m afraid I was myself,” he said.

Minseok grinned.

“Oh dear,” Jongdae’s mother said, and frowned. “Jongdae, you must be nice to him, there’s no getting the two of you out of this marriage now, try not to start off miserable, will you?”

“I’ll make it right, Mama,” Jongdae said.

“Well, it ought to be easy if he’s anything like his sister. She’s a delight, I almost wish we’d thought to offer your brother for her.”

“I could never keep up,” Jongdeok said. “She’s much too pretty for me. The Accountant King will have to have a wife as plain and boring as himself.”

“You do have the most unfortunate chin,” Jongdae said with a grin.

“I have a chin?”

Jongdeok pushed his spectacles up his nose and mugged, making them all laugh, so they missed the Tirians’ entrance. Jongdae heard the familiar sound of Baekhyun delicately clearing his throat and turned to find -

Was that even the same person?

The Princess Royal of Tiria was even more of a vision than she’d been in the morning, but Jongdae wondered whether he would have recognized Chanyeol if she hadn’t been on his arm. All traces of fluffy hair were gone, and if his slim-cut suit made him look even taller, without the volume of that horrendous old coat, he seemed less hulking. He stood more easily, leaned toward his sister, smiling at them. The deep wine of the suit complemented the reddish tint of his hair. Emerging from those narrow sleeves, his hands looked even bigger.

Pity about the squint.

“Well, I see that our resident worker of miracles maintains his perfect record,” Minseok said. “Chanyeol, you look incredible.”

Chanyeol ducked his head and rubbed one hand down his front.

“It was very kind of the ambassador to give up his suit for me.”

“If it was Maxim Maximovich, he only gave up half of it,” Jongdeok said, only to be struck in the arm by Her Majesty, queen of Viridan, his mother, who tried to act outraged but did a terrible job of it.

Yoora’s laughter pealed out. Minseok stepped forward and gestured for Chanyeol to turn around, which he did, blushing.

“I love this long coat, it’s so clever, don’t you think, Dae?”

Honestly, the only thing Jongdae didn’t love about it was that it inspired him to be curious about what was underneath it.

“It suits you beautifully,” he said.

“What, this beautiful suit?” Chanyeol said.

Then he blinked and looked alarmed, but his sister pinched him and laughed, and he turned to her to laugh as well.

“I’m so sorry,” Yoora said. “I told him to wait at least ten years before starting in with the word games, please don’t start a war with us.”

Chanyeol groaned over a grin, and Jongdae wondered where this personality had been hiding all morning.

“Please don’t trouble yourself,” Jongdae’s mother said. “Jongdae is well used to that sort of thing from his elder brother, he probably considers it comforting.”

“I most certainly do not,” Jongdae said.

Or: was it too soon to joke?

“You most certainly do,” Minseok said.

"I’m so relieved,” Chanyeol said, still grinning.

Jongdae looked over at Minseok, whose smile was quite knowing.

The bell rang to call them in, and their group was broken up around the table. Jongdae found himself seated between a distant cousin and a diplomat whose stories he had heard a thousand times, so he could tune them out to watch Chanyeol, seated at his mother’s right.

He was good to her, all throughout dinner. Jongdae saw his mother talking, so he knew Chanyeol didn’t overwhelm the conversation. He saw her laugh several times, and though he knew she was a cheerful person with easy laughter, it still meant that Chanyeol made an effort to amuse her. He kept an eye on her water glass and signaled to the table servants with an easy subtlety when the glass got low.

Just as Minseok had charmed him by being kind and easy with his family, even to the point of listening patiently to Jongdeok’s complex plans for social welfare programs and the financing thereof.

He caught Minseok’s eye across the table, and hoped Min’s smile meant he understood what Jongdae intended with his nod, that his apology would be both forthcoming and sincere.


	5. Chapter 5

Minseok’s first thought when Chanyeol walked in was that they definitely  needed  to have their conversation about everyone's expectations regarding their relationship at the soonest possible moment. Because he would have to expend some real energy tamping down his imagination if Chanyeol was interested in only sleeping with women.

It wasn’t just the suit – which was a minor revelation in and of itself; Minseok wondered whether he could get away with a coat cut that long, even at his own much-lesser height – or the small gold ring winking with a tiny topaz in his left ear. It was also the ease with which Chanyeol stood, arms linked with his sister, warm and appealing, and his smile so bright. Perhaps the relief that blossomed when he and Jongdae actually joked with one another was part of what left Minseok feeling slightly winded.

He watched Jongdae watch Chanyeol throughout dinner, while giving half an ear to Chanyeol’s sister charming the wits out of Jongdae’s father. He was so curious to discover whether Chanyeol had half so much charisma under his shyness, or whether his shyness was born of living next to so much light.

Minseok may have been older than his own sister, but he knew the latter feeling well. The Princess Royal of Isatis was precisely the force of nature required to be the female monarch of a small country squashed  between  larger neighbors, just like their mother and their grandmother. Minseok loved her but felt that there was more air to breathe elsewhere. Jongdae, younger child coddled by parents and elder sibling alike, had never quite understood.

So it was nice to have Chanyeol’s company when Minseok found himself in his accustomed place after dinner, standing quietly to the side while the knot of rulers and rulers-to-be chatted with one another. It was even nicer, imagining the implications of Chanyeol’s blush and smile when Jongdae approached the group bearing a wine bottle and three glasses to say,

“I’d like to borrow my spouse and fiancé, if I may.”

The grins around them reflected Minseok’s hopes for Chanyeol’s predilections and the possibility of future amusement.

The palace had a number of pleasant little balconies. Jongdae led them to one outfitted with numerous comfortable chairs, on the side opposite to the airyard and its lights, so they could see the stars. He poured them each a glass of wine. Minseok couldn’t see, but if he had been the one to hand over the glass, he would’ve made sure to drag his fingers across Chanyeol’s, just to learn the reaction.

“Chanyeol, I’m sorry. My behavior this morning was reprehensible, I have no excuse for it,” Jongdae said.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Minseok could see Chanyeol’s bowed head.

“You do, though,” Chanyeol said. “Everyone knows how happy you both are, it has to be hard. I don’t – I mean, I hope that. I – “ 

Minseok wished they knew one another well enough to just hug the poor man.

“What do you hope, Chanyeol?” he asked when the silence dragged out.

“I will never do anything to come between you,” Chanyeol said hoarsely.

Jongdae gave a shaky exhale.

“I don't think that’s an answer,” Minseok said. “What do you hope for?”

“I hope for the best?”

“What is the best?” Jongdae asked, echoing Minseok’s thought.

“I’m not – sure,” Chanyeol said.

Oh, damn them all for their etiquette and their training and the damned eyes all around them, that they couldn’t just get drunk together and hash this bloody thing out. Minseok could see so many avenues to heartache among them, and he was in his own way as bad at being open as Jongdae was, he was so  _ vexed _ .

“I am going to drink this probably-priceless glass of wine all  at once , and you will refill it immediately, Jongdae,” he growled.

“Oh. Did I say the wrong thing again?” Chanyeol asked miserably while Minseok did just that.

“No, Min only drinks like this when he’s annoyed at himself,” Jongdae said, and refilled the glass. “If we’re very fortunate, in six months or so, he’ll even tell us why.”

Minseok huffed and dropped into a chair to drink his second glass at a reasonable pace.

“You still haven’t accepted my apology,” Jongdae said some while later, softly.

“I did the moment you said it,” Chanyeol said.

Minseok leaned back to watch the stars twinkle and feel his worry and annoyance settle firmly in his chest. There was a best, and he was starting to hope for it, but oh, it was a steep path.

♕♕♕

Chanyeol wished he felt secure enough in his ability to get a little drunk without simultaneously getting a little stupid, so that he could follow Minseok’s example. The whole evening had made him feel dizzy, as if they’d spun him around in circles. Her Majesty had been all kindness to him during dinner, warm and charming in a way that settled him, it was so like being at home.

T hat Jongdae apologized was good, wasn’t it? The ensuing awkwardness made it so difficult to know. He wanted to cling to the gesture.

He wanted to be able to say out loud, “I hope you’ll love me too.”

But of course, one couldn’t. Even knowing nothing of romance, Chanyeol knew hearts didn’t work that way. Dark depths of the sea, most treaty-marriages consisted of pleasant acquaintances, or friends at best, each partner finding their intimacy elsewhere. The only issue there was illegitimacy of any children, and that certainly wouldn’t apply for him.

So maybe there were lots of ways in which this would be all right.

They were both so beautiful, though. Chanyeol had seen Jongdae watching him throughout dinner. Had seen the musing expression, so less angry than earlier. And here they were, sitting together alone, in a silence that wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t horrible, either.

And it was only the first day.

“As much as I’d like to sit here and get thoroughly drunk, I suppose that would be detrimental to the busy day we have planned tomorrow,” Minseok said.

“A tour of the airyards, yes?” Chanyeol said. “I’m so eager to see them. I’ve spent time at our shipyards, of course, but it must be so different. Flying in was amazing.”

He thought that small flash might’ve been Jongdae smiling.

“And perhaps a ride in the afternoon, if you like? Your sister’s locked down for a tour of the hospital, but we can probably get away with slightly fewer diplomatic appearances, considering the whole engagement thing," Minseok said.

Jongdae made a small sound as if he’d choked on his wine.

“That sounds wonderful.”

“We’ll escort you to your rooms,” Jongdae said.

Which was nice, even if it did rather feel like a dismissal. And, anyway, Chanyeol wouldn’t have been able to find them on his own  even if he’d had his spectacles. Their walk was silent, and at the door, he couldn’t come up with anything better than,

“Well … goodnight.”

He couldn’t read the expression on Jongdae’s face, although his “good night” seemed friendly enough.

Minseok took his hand and squeezed it briefly.

“See you tomorrow, Chanyeol.”

Before they were five steps down the hallway, their hands were clasped.

Chanyeol flung himself through the door only to find that everyone was still off at their upstairs or downstairs post-dinner socializing. He was not one bit sorry to wriggle out of the suit and burrow into some cushions to groan out the welter of frustration, confusion, and burgeoning crush pinging around in his aching head. By the time his sister and her entourage returned, he was more than halfway asleep, although sadly not so much that he missed her “damn, I had so hoped he would still be  _ busy _ .”

♕♕♕

At least there was one thing Jongdae knew he had in common with Chanyeol: he had no idea what the best-case scenario would even be. So there was a thing to go on. 

That was more comfortable to cling to, anyway, than the misery in Chanyeol’s voice when he had said, “I will never do anything to come between you.” That was what he had wanted to hear; Jongdae refused to interrogate in himself why hearing it should’ve made him feel so guilty. He had apologized and it had been accepted. Chanyeol’s expectations didn’t seem to be extreme. They could find a way through this without inconvenience.

Other than Minseok’s being annoyed again, and other than his own flare of jealousy when Minseok had taken Chanyeol’s hand. Really, he must master himself, even if this was to be a treaty-marriage as generally understood for such things, there were going to be times when basic levels of affection would be appropriate. There was no reason why he himself should’ve hesitated to take that hand, no matter how it might engulf his own.

Jongdae shook himself.

“All right, love?” Minseok asked.

Jongdae pushed him against the wall and leaned into the familiar warmth of his body.

“I’ll be better when we’re back in our rooms.”

Minseok reached around to cup his ass and pull him closer.

“Better walk faster, then.”

Jongdae was wholly unsurprised later, ass-up and struggling to stay on his elbows, when Minseok grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back, waiting for his cry to die off before saying, 

“I shouldn’t have to prove to you that I’m yours, Jongdae.”

Jongdae tried to say “no,” but then Minseok hit the good spot, and he was too busy coming to talk any more.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cuteness ... rising ...

Breakfast was a pleasant affair , livened up by a charm contest between Yoora and Baekhyun that had even Jongdae grinning. Chanyeol, in a n easy-fitting suit of sandy pale linen that made Minseok envious for the hot  morning ahead of them, picked at his breakfast with an attempt to not frown, until  Minseok noticed that all the fruit was missing off  the  plate and handed all his own over. This brought on one of those blushing smiles from Chanyeol, a grin from Yoora, and downturned lips from Jongdae.

Of course, once they arrived at the airyards ,  Jongdae couldn’t help but be drawn into conversation, as the resident expert in airships and in company of a fiancé with approximately endless questions. Chanyeol had hooked a pair of dark spectacles over his ears that gave him a  rakish look . He  wandered everywhere he was allowed, looking back for Jongdae every few steps, quizzing him about  inert versus flammable gas, the inner structures of the different kinds of airships, and their operation.

Jongdae,  who only knew as much as he did owing to a similar level of enthusiasm,  answered questions and made introductions until the rest of their party was ready to expire from too much sun and too little interest.

“Chanyeol, I’m going to pretend to faint if you don’t agree to leave right now. You have a third of every year for the rest of your life to annoy these people with your endless interrogations,” the Princess Royal of Tiria announced finally.

“I like her,” Baekhyun murmured.

Indeed. Minseok suspected that their third-year in Tiria would be no hardship at all.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol said, curling his sister’s hand around his arm.

But his apology was accompanied by a grin and no sign at all of hunched shoulders or a bowed head. After  Chanyeol had escorted his sister to the ground and handed her into the motorcar, he whirled around. 

“Jongdae,” he said, and took Jongdae’s hand in both his own. “Thank you. I know I asked every question under the sun, you were so kind, and I apologize in advance for the hundred more questions I’ll probably dream up.”

“Oh. Well. My pleasure,” Jongdae stammered, and wouldn’t meet Minseok’s eye as he climbed into the motorcar.

Minseok was vastly more pleased with day two. That enjoyable adventure was followed by lunch a deux and a brief rest during which Jongdae clung to him with a wandering mouth and hands. And thank the mountain winds that he did, because Minseok was still loose from his post-orgasmic haze when Chanyeol met them in the hall for their ride, and Minseok was therefore able to stare without making a scene in his breeches.

Legs half a league long looked very well indeed in riding breeches and boots. And if Chanyeol's suit the day before had been ill-cut and old-fashioned, his riding coat, although a non-traditional rusty-red shade, was cut most flatteringly. Minseok had always loved to admire Jongdae in his black breeches and forest-green coat. He was delighted to have a second excellent view to gaze upon.

“Do you ride much?” Jongdae squeaked at him.

Oh ho. How amusing.

“Yes, lots,” Chanyeol said. “Although not often so formally. Half the time I just jump onto Angel without even a saddle, and off we go in a riot of dogs.”

He stopped.

“Oh. Oh, Minseok,” he said.

Minseok  blinked up into  amber-brown eyes and felt momentarily stupid.

“Are you still afraid of dogs? I didn’t even think of it until just this moment .”

Jongdae laughed once – the sound he made when he was nervous. Minseok gathered hi mself from wherever he’d gone momentarily wandering.

“Afraid’s a bit strong,” he said. “Though they’re not my favorite. Jongdae and I both prefer cats.”

Chanyeol nodded.

“I don’t let them in the house anyway, they’re a menace. If they still bother you living in the stable, I can move them back to the palace, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“Chanyeol, we won’t take your pets away from you,” Jongdae said.

Minseok went warm  at the gesture. And then smiled to himself when Chanyeol turned around a grin that made Jongdae blink.

“They’re not really,” he said.  “Not that I’m not fond of them, but they belong to each other more than they belong to me. My only  real pet is Toben, and he’s barely bigger than a kitten. He mostly lives in the kitchen, anyway, he won’t bother you.”

“I’m sure he won’t,” Jongdae said gently.

This time, it was Minseok’s turn to be buffeted by questions. Of course, he was happy to talk horses all day, though there was an interruption when they walked outside and Chanyeol had to pause his stream of inquiries to flirt with all three mounts by way of chin scratches and sugar cubes.

♕♕♕

Day two was so much better, if for no other reason than they had things to do other than stand around awkwardly until Chanyeol fell apart and said something inadvertently awful.

Airships! He had grown up by the sea, and loved boats, but their flight to Viridan had been only his second time on an airship and a much longer trip. He’d spent the whole time climbing around as much of it as he could reach, pestering the crew with questions and staring open-mouthed at the sheer variety of landscape.

That such things could be built of steel and fabric, and actually float in the air, was incredible. Chanyeol liked knowing how things worked; he wanted to know everything about everything. They had even seen the tiny one-person airships that carried mail across the continent at speeds that Chanyeol’s parents still could barely believe. 

Jongdae hadn’t seemed bothered to answer all his questions.

And Chanyeol's dark spectacles had prescription lenses in them, so he could even see properly. He didn’t need to worry about tripping over anything, and his head didn’t ache.

A much better day. 

Yoora teased him mercilessly about his enthusiasm over lunch, but he could tell she was pleased that he wasn’t moping anymore. 

He knew his formal riding clothes made him look sleek and tall, and he hadn’t yet met a horse that he couldn’t eventually get along with. Plus there were the added lures of still wearing proper eyewear and getting a closer look at a landscape much greener than he was used to. 

His anticipation of the view of his two stunning fiancés in tight riding breeches was well fulfilled. Jongdae was in green again, Minseok in cobalt blue that made his grey eyes look striking under his dark hair. They were both so trim and small. His hands had wrapped so fully around Jongdae’s at the airyard. He wanted to touch them. Wanted to know what they did with those small, clever hands. Wanted to know whether either of them might be deceptively strong, perhaps, and hold him down to do – something.

Chanyeol shook himself. He took a minute to introduce himself to the horses and pull himself back together.

The horse they gave him was a beautiful, long-legged gelding much calmer and thinner than his beloved Angel, who was in her own way as ridiculous as Chanyeol felt himself to be, and just as willing to fling herself around on the beach for the sheer joy of it. This mount, he thought, would carry Chanyeol happily as long as he wasn’t asked to do anything that might injure his dignity.

They both sat so beautifully, and if Chanyeol fretted to be looking so far down at them yet again, at least the looking was well worthwhile. Jongdae’s hands were elegant in his gloves, stroking his horse’s neck. Minseok moved as one with his, a sensual sway that made Chanyeol feel hot in the back of his neck.

He distracted himself with questions about the inhabitants of palace stables, which Minseok answered in his light, husky voice while Jongdae rode slightly ahead. They turned onto a path through trees, and Minseok called out,

“Are we to the pond, love?”

“Yes.”

Tiria had orchards and mangrove swamps, and a few areas of low, scrubby forest, but nothing like this – a broad path of dappled sunlight between large trees. The air was cooler in the shade, and sweet-smelling.

Well. Even if Minseok and Jongdae wouldn't ever want to spend time with him, at least two-thirds of each year would be all right. He could occupy himself well enough at home, and between the airyards and the wonder that was this forest, he could fill up his days here. He could find his way through. He exhaled.

“All right, Chanyeol?” Minseok asked.

“Yes,” he said.

♕♕♕

Jongdae wanted the world to feel more solid under his feet, but it kept getting yanked away from him. Chanyeol asked all the questions he himself had asked on his first visit to the airyards when they were built – intelligent questions that showed some knowledge of engineering and construction, and commentary that made Jongdae curious about seagoing ships. It comforted him to know that there were at least  a couple of  topics of conversation that they could touch on pleasantly.

And then Chanyeol had turned on him with a smile and a clasp of those huge, warm hands, and every bit of Jongdae’s steadiness flew off into the sky.

He had a husband. He didn’t need this damnable flash of attraction. It was a treaty-marriage, for gods’ sake. He had struck diamond once. There was less than no point at expecting the same to happen a second time.

Not that said husband helped matters, the way he undressed Chanyeol with his eyes when they gathered in the front hall. Worse, Jongdae had been prepared to sneer, but Chanyeol’s habit was elegant and flattering, showing off his endless legs to excellent effect.

And how could one sneer at someone willing to be so kind to Minseok? To give up his own dogs?

Really.

The sneaking suspicion that he was going to end up liking Chanyeol made Jongdae dislike him more than ever.

He was just so damned interested in things. It was as if he had never been introduced to boredom. He rode next to Minseok, asking about the horses, the palace grounds, the types of trees they rode under.

Botany hadn’t been covered in his or Minseok’s education, but something about the way Chanyeol asked made Jongdae regret that, and want to promise to look them up on their return.

Types of trees.

Pah.

He led them toward the pond simply because it was a place of comfort and a pleasant spot to rest before the ride back. And it was a comfort, once they had dismounted and tied the horses, that when he  took their usual spot under a nice oak, Minseok took his own usual spot, lying with his head on Jongdae’s thigh.

Jongdae couldn’t read the expression on Chanyeol’s face, looking down at them, dark spectacles still on his face. But he  lay  next to them  on one elbow  and stretched those long legs out toward the horizon, plucked a few blades of grass.

“This is beautiful,” Chanyeol said after a time.

“One of our favorite spots,” Minseok said.

“Do you swim?” Chanyeol asked, gesturing at the pond below them.

Minseok surreptitiously pinched Jongdae’s knee.

“Only on hot days. The water’s very cold,” Jongdae said.

Chanyeol grinned.

“The ocean, too. Though that rarely stops me from going in, except during winter.”

“I’ve never seen the ocean,” Jongdae said, then bit his cheek for his mouth’s betrayal.

“You will soon,” Chanyeol said. “I hope you like it. I’d never seen real mountains until this trip. I think it gave me a new appreciation of the word ‘magnificent’."

Minseok laughed softly.

They sat quietly for a long while. Jongdae toyed with the hair on the back of Minseok’s head and watched Chanyeol watch him do it. A breeze ruffled the trees and the surface of the pond.

“I like how wind through the leaves sounds a little like the sea,” Chanyeol said.

Jongdae thought about the first half-year he’d spent in Isatis, which was so like and yet so unlike home, and how he had clung to Minseok as the only familiar thing. How lonely he had been for his family, for Baekhyun and Joonmyun and Yixing.

He wouldn’t be lonely now, in Tiria, with Minseok by his side. But it scratched at his sense of fairness, to think that the two of them could shut Chanyeol out entirely. It seemed – discourteous.

“I enjoyed this morning so much,” Chanyeol said. “Thank you again for your patience with me. I’m used to being busy, yesterday was a frightful amount of standing around, wasn’t it?”

Jongdae, whose version of being busy usually meant standing around in front of an easel, had to laugh.

“What are you busy with?” he asked.

There followed an eager litany that made Minseok roll over, chin on Jongdae’s leg, to gaze up wryly while Chanyeol gesticulated: riding, swimming, music, fencing – all very princely sorts of endeavors – along with the odd mention of charity projects, and once the word “workshop,” followed by a blush and an abrupt change of topic.

“Jongdae fences,” Minseok said to Jongdae’s cringe.

“Not very well.”

“Oh, I’m pretty terrible, I just like the exercise,” Chanyeol said. “My arms are so long that it gives me such an advantage in reach that I never had to bother to develop much skill.”

Jongdae found that statement not quite relatable.

“I never much cared for waving sticks around,” Minseok said, sitting up and shaking his hair back into place. “I prefer boxing.”

Chanyeol shuddered.

Well, at least there was a second point of agreement between them.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Chanyeol said to the shredded pile of grass in front of him. 

Jongdae agreed, but he waited to find out  what  w as strange  in particular while Chanyeol destroyed another hapless piece of plant.

“We leave tomorrow already, and it’s been so little time. And then in two months you’ll come to Tiria, and – well.”

Two months. Eight weeks, and everything would change. Oh, everything would be different forever.

“We’ll go to Tiria and marry you,” Minseok said firmly. “You’ll show us this house by the sea, and we’ll make the best of it.”


	7. Chapter 7

Frozen hells, Jongdae was nothing but broody again on the ride back. Chanyeol watched closely enough to notice and started to fret. Minseok felt like a wild bird trapped indoors, the way they all flew back and forth between ease and distress with no pause between. He wanted nothing more than to get very drunk and stay that way for at least an entire day.

He wished he were more of a philosopher, so he could think of a way to convince Jongdae that all this would be fine. It could be better than fine, even, if only they could give themselves time.

If only he could think of a way to convince Jongdae that opening the orbit of people he loved would not make that love any less.

It was a quandary.

Despite the quiet on the part of his husband and future husband, their small family dinner was pleasant, with Jongdae’s parents and Chanyeol’s sister discussing wedding plans alongside thoughtful inclusions of himself and his family’s contribution and wry comments from Baekhyun and Jongdeok to provide humor.

They walked Chanyeol to his rooms again, taking the long way around so as not to meet his sister in the halls.

“Shall I write?” Chanyeol asked at the door.

“Of course,” Minseok said.

Chanyeol shook his head.

“Jongdae. Shall I write to you?”

Minseok wanted to embrace him. Wanted to laugh, to clasp his hand, to kiss his cheek. If anyone could make his way into the small, close space in which he and Jongdae twined together, it might be this guileless, earnest prince.

“Yes,” Jongdae rasped.

Chanyeol nodded and bowed to them.

He and his sister left on an airship before noon the next day, with bows and handshakes all around. Her Majesty kissed Yoora’s cheek. Minseok stood on the windy launch deck and didn’t complain that Jongdae held his hand in a painful grip.

“Wave to him,” Minseok said.

They waved until even Chanyeol’s long arms were out of sight.

Chanyeol did write, over the two months that separated them. He mostly left wedding details to the organizers, instead writing of the house by the sea, the changing season, amusing stories about his days. Minseok and Jongdae shared the letters with one another – the ones to Minseok were more thoughtful and the ones to Jongdae funnier.

Minseok’s family wrote as well. Both male and treaty-married to Viridan, his importance to Isatis lay only in himself as a symbol of protection and trade. But both his sister and his mother would come to the wedding. They sent well-wishes, reasonably warm.

They made Chanyeol’s rooms ready for him. Minseok wandered the palace with Joonmyun and Yixing, picking through unused rooms and dusty attics to find well-built, comfortable furniture. He was particularly pleased to uncover a very ancient bed indeed, with high railings from which to hang thick curtains to keep a chilly sleeper warm.

Jongdae chose the décor, blushing when Minseok pointed out that charcoal and deep rose were indeed very like “the sea during a storm” (if palace paintings were to be believed) and “sunset with clouds.” The odd russet accent that reminded Minseok of Chanyeol’s horrible suit – and his hair – he did not tease Jongdae about. He did compliment Jongdae on the lovely grey velvet pillow that came to line the window seat.

Jongdae spent a great deal of time in his studio, standing in front of a canvas that never seemed to have any more paint on it than the day before. He spent much of his remaining time with his hands, his mouth on Minseok, leaving marks, pleading for harder, faster, more.

Minseok wondered whether this was what Jongdae had been like before they got married. Wondered whether he had wandered this palace scowling alone in those days.

“I worry,” he said to Joonmyun.

“Of course you do,” Joon said. “You don’t even have the benefit of infatuation, like we did. But you know Baek would never have sent it forward if he didn’t think it could work, and he’s known Jongdae their whole lives. Hells, Min. Didn’t Chanyeol make you want to take him under your wing after about five minutes?”

Minseok couldn’t deny it.

“I just want it to be easy,” he said.

“Nothing’s ever easy,” Joonmyun said gently.

Nonetheless, plans continued apace. Minseok and Jongdae were fitted for the formal uniforms they’d wear in Tiria. The rest of the royal family met with tailors. Gifts were prepared, parties were endured, and they rode through cheering crowds to the airyards for the airship to Tiria: the nation’s largest, its cannons temporarily decommissioned to make room for their large party.

After a day and a half, they stopped in Isatis to pick up Minseok’s mother, sister, and entourage. They were another day and a half in the air, landing in Tiria at midday. The sun was broiling, and when they tethered, the wind he’d thought was from their passage didn’t die down at all, though it was scented with salt.

A large party stood on the deck to welcome them, but Minseok picked out Chanyeol immediately – in tall boots; loose, dark trousers; a pale shirt and blue sash; and a long, rust-red coat that billowed in the wind. Wearing his dark spectacles and a grin even brighter than the glare.

♕♕♕

Chanyeol put his spectacles on the minute he was inside the airship’s gondola and waved until he could no longer see Minseok and Jongdae.

“What do you think, little brother?” Yoora asked quietly when he turned away.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I hope plenty, though.”

She held his hand for a while, and they watched the landscape roll by under them.

“I hope for you too, Yeollie,” she said. “Try not to be impatient.”

He had to smile.

“Oh sure, I’m great at patience.”

She made a face of mock horror.

He did try to tell himself to be patient and to keep his expectations low to counter his rising sense of excitement. It helped to have so much to do. Having met them, Chanyeol had an idea of how to decorate the rooms he had set aside for them at the house. The largest was to be for Jongdae, in shades of green, of course. Chanyeol lectured himself sternly not to mind it that Jongdae and Minseok would almost certainly share. That was the whole purpose of giving him the largest room, and it would do well to be practical about it.

“I hope you’re not setting yourself up for heartache, Yeol,” Jongin said one afternoon after they’d spent several hours wrestling with details of décor.

“Me too.”

He enjoyed the thought of his fiancés’ staff meeting his: a similar trio of competence, despite their completely different energy. Sehun had taken over the fine details of finishing the house, whereas Jongin used his easy kindness to cajole workers into greater speed. They only brought in Kyungsoo when someone needed to be frightened into meeting a deadline.

And then they’d laugh about it afterward, Kyungsoo most of all, rolling on the kitchen bench with Toben in his arms.

“Prince Soft-Heart and his staff of softies,” Kyungsoo said once. “How do we ever get anything done?”

“I’m convinced it’s because everyone knows that ultimately, if I’m unhappy they’ll have to deal with my sister.”

“Entirely plausible.”

Sehun was frightened of horses, so he did not accompany them to the royal stables to choose possibly-temporary mounts for the princes. Chanyeol walked immediately to the dappled grey mare he wanted for Minseok.

“Glacier’s lovely,” Jongin said. “I’ve always liked her, she’s a sweet lady. Is Prince Minseok a timid rider?”

“Not a bit, I just thought – “

Oh dear, he didn’t want to say that out loud.

Kyungsoo and Jongin narrowed their eyes at him. He never had gotten used to seeing an identical expression on two such different faces.

“Minseok has grey eyes.”

“Chanyeol!” Kyungsoo cried. “You have to get a hold of yourself. Because if they make you unhappy, I have to drown them in the sea, and then a war will break out, and we’ll be forced to flee to the far north, and you know how none of us can bear the cold.”

“And we can’t escape to the southern jungle, because Sehun’s too frightened of bugs,” Jongin said sadly.

It was good to laugh with them about it, no matter how serious the point might be. Nonetheless, Glacier was to be coddled and brushed for Minseok. For Jongdae, Morningstar, a black gelding as small-boned and fiery as the prince himself, each horse to be outfitted in tack trimmed with the appropriate color. His bay Angel, despite her silly personality, loved to be spoiled and dressed up fancy. They’d look wonderful, riding together.

And then it was a matter of commissioning and gathering small gifts – things that he thought might make them feel more welcome and comfortable at the house. The rings he would give them. Putting on some final touches in his workshop and then making Jongdae’s painting studio ready to receive an influx of whatever Jongdae desired.

He wrote to each of them every day. He didn’t _send_ the letters every day, because he knew that would make him look like an overeager schoolboy, but he tried to add at least a paragraph to the pages that went out each week. Despite assuming that they would share them with one another, he tried to make the letters different, tried to keep his tone lighter with Jongdae’s, to avoid any semblance of pressure or obligation.

He heard back from Minseok almost weekly – not long missives, and not very personal, but warm for all that. Each letter comforted Chanyeol with the thought that he already had a friend in one of his husbands. He stored them carefully in a box that had been carved by his grandfather and reread them often.

He received letters from Jongdae only twice. They were both pretty formal, friendly in a diplomat’s sort of way. Except for the closing sentence of the second one, “I’m honored that you’re putting so much effort into making us feel welcome, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol wanted to write back to argue and say that it was in no way a duty or a burden, but simply a pleasure, to make a home in which they might be friendly and comfortable together, no matter how their hearts and bodies might eventually configure things. But he thought he’d save that to say in person.

There was, as with any building-related project, a last-minute scramble. Chanyeol spent the last day before their arrival up on a ladder sweating through his shirt, helping hold the awnings in place that would keep the inlanders’ bedrooms cooler. Then he jumped on a horse (not Angel, currently enjoying her beautification process at the palace) and rode at a wholly unsafe pace to get to the palace in time to be dumped into a barber’s chair for a haircut and the despairing wails of the person in charge of his fingernails.

Sehun tried to argue with him the next day about wearing the wine-red suit to greet them, and Chanyeol almost gave in, knowing how well it flattered him. But ultimately, he was Tirian, and Tirian clothes he would wear. He needed the pockets, anyway.

♕♕♕

Jongdae’s eyes found Chanyeol immediately in the crowd. What did that mean? He grasped Minseok’s hand. The airship tethered, and the slow process of disembarking a crowd of royals began. With reigning monarchs of three nations and heirs royal combined on one platform, the greetings were interminable, made more so by the scorching sun. By the time the intendeds were finally pushed toward one another, Jongdae could feel his diplomatic smile starting to melt at the ends. Chanyeol reached out both hands; Jongdae took the right one without thinking twice about it, under the force of so much heat and sun. Somehow the warmth of Chanyeol’s hand wasn’t oppressive, and the strength of his grip made Jongdae lean forward a little, as if it could hold him up.

“Jongdae, we appear to be marrying a pirate,” Minseok murmured.

Chanyeol grinned under his dark spectacles. How nice that must be, not to have to squint against the glare.

“I’m fairly sure pirates leave off the shirt, and a bare chest might not be appropriate considering the company,” he said.

Jongdae had forgotten the depth of Chanyeol’s voice. He shivered, even as Minseok’s laugh rang out.

“There’s a fleet of motorcars to take everyone to the palace, but if you’d prefer a few moments of quiet, we could also ride.”

A few moments of quiet. That might make even the sun worthwhile.

“What do you think, love?” Minseok asked.

Chanyeol let go of their hands.

“Maybe these will influence your decision,” he said with a grin, pulling a small oblong box from each pocket.

Round dark spectacles like his own.

“Oh, what a gesture,” Minseok said.

Jongdae curled his pair over his ears and immediately felt the relief of less glare. Then he noticed the strangeness of greyed-out colors and craned his neck to see what the world looked like, thinking of his palette. Wondering when he’d get back to it.

“Let’s ride,” he said.

“Look at these three,” Chanyeol’s father said when they approached. “Already becoming a matched set.”

“One does rather envy their protection from this glare,” Minseok’s mother murmured.

Which of course was an order not to be denied, so the crowd of them trooped down the stairs in the wind and into the waiting motorcars.

The horse Chanyeol presented him with was beautiful, fine-boned and tossing his head but easily brought to rein, in green-trimmed tack.

“This fine lady’s more tame than maybe you like,” Chanyeol was saying to Minseok by the dapple grey. “But she’s so pretty.”

“She is indeed,” Minseok said as he mounted.

He leaned to Jongdae while Chanyeol mounted.

“So I’m given a beautiful, distinguished beast, and you have one dark and restive. We seem to have been assigned types,” he said softly, with a wicked grin.

Jongdae tossed his head, then his horse tossed its head, and Jongdae wasn’t sure whether he felt amused or ashamed.

Jongdae hardly paid attention to the ride. The air smelled sharp with salt, and his dark glasses dimmed color around him. Morningstar had caught his mood and required a firm hand to keep him from prancing with nerves. Before he was ready for it, they arrived at the palace. It was hardly a “travesty,” though it was smaller than home, built of dark stone with banners flying off every possible surface.

Chanyeol appeared at his knee.

“Did he annoy you?” he asked. “He seems anxious today, that looked like a lot of work.”

Jongdae took the hand held up to him without thinking and slid to the ground. Which stayed under his feet, for the moment.

“No, he was fine.”

Chanyeol tugged at his hand.

“Come look at the sea.”

If you stood in the right place and looked away from the cities, Viridan’s plains stretched out impossible distances, green in the spring fading to late summer’s gold. But in any direction, mountains lined the horizon. They made a line of demarcation, so that one’s world had a limit.

The sea went on forever, dark and constantly moving. The wind blew steadily in his face, and he could hear a distant thrum. There was no end to it. There was no border or stop.

“It’s hard to believe that I’m seeing something so vast,” Minseok said.

“From here, we’re looking out toward the other side of the world,” Chanyeol said, sounding dreamy.

A servant ran up to them, requiring their presence inside, and Jongdae turned away from the busy sea.


	8. Chapter 8

The first time he had gotten married, Minseok had been surprised to discover how tangential he was to the entire process. Beyond a few questions at the beginning, he had had no say in any of the planning. Even their wedding trip had been worked into the treaty, a tour of the three Viridanian cities and a circuit around Isatis, before they settled into their first half-year in Isatis and the semi-annual trek back and forth.

This time, he let all the preparations wash over him, let himself be tugged and paraded, measured and primped as required, and didn’t worry about it. The wedding was for the onlookers, anyhow. By treaty, all this had already been done for months. But the people required a symbol, and he would take his assigned steps through it as he must.

He had Jongdae to occupy his thoughts, anyway.  Jongdae  seemed to have lost track of his anger entirely, blinking up at Chanyeol when spoken to as if stupefied, otherwise hovering so close to Minseok’s shoulder that they occasionally ran into one another. 

Minseok held his hand whenever it was appropriate to do so, and a few times when it wasn’t, keeping their fingers linked behind his back. 

In a vexing fiction of some ridiculous expectation of either romance or chastity, they were each quartered with their families for the two days before the wedding. That meant that Jongdae, at least, would be petted and soothed by his parents and have Baekhyun to needle some sense into him.

Minseok rather envied that, in the sitting room with his mother and sister while they discussed matters of state for a state he no longer mattered to.

“You look very well, my dear,” his mother said vaguely to his left ear. “Isn’t this new husband of yours quite tall? What a lot of effort that must’ve been, to grow so much.”

Minseok noted in himself at least enough affection for  Chan ye ol  that he rather wanted to snarl at his own mother for her rudeness.

“Access straight to the sea with no tariffs,” his sister said  later . “Minnie, thank the gods below that you turned out so beautiful, it’s done a world of good.”

“I suppose I’ll retire,” he said. 

It was a bit early, but it wouldn’t do to mar his usefulness with dark circles under his eyes. And anyway, Yifan loomed in his room, a familiar, if gloomy, face.

“All’s well at the house?”

Their home in Isatis was a small lodge on the palace grounds built by a queen some generations ago for a favored consort who had a terror of the palace or some such. Unless drunken tales were to be believed, and it was actually that said queen never allowed said consort to wear any clothes.

“It’s as it ever was, Highness,” Yifan said. “Zitao is third in comm and  of the royal guard now, and Han, um.”

“Is Han.”

“Indeed, Highness.”

Minseok always wished they hadn’t set out terms for each residence having their own staff. He missed their Viridanian trio when they were in Isatis, if for nothing else than the conversation, or Yixing serenading them.

But the days were busy. There were hours sitting in a room with Jongdae and Chanyeol, receiving gifts and well-wishes from diplomats. It was gratifying to see a few modest gifts from people with whom Chanyeol had worked, both in their sincere affection and in the way he would lurch forward to shake their hands and make introductions. This led to Jongdae holding a wicker basket full of children’s clay animal models on his knee for the better part of an hour, with a bemused expression on his face that made Minseok want to hug them both. 

The day before the wedding, three of them sat in the afternoon for a ferrotype together, Chanyeol seated in front so that he didn’t make them look foolish with his height. He sat quietly enough during the exposure, then bowed to them red-faced before bolting away. Minseok fretted about it the entire afternoon, wondering what could’ve gone wrong. 

But by that evening’s second interminable dinner, Chanyeol stood close to them, blushing at the floor but past whatever had made him run earlier.

“Everything all right?” Jongdae asked .

Minseok squeezed his elbow in gratitude.

“Oh! Yes, quite,” Chanyeol stammered .

It would’ve been wholly unconvincing, except that he smiled brightly, staying close by them for as long as it was permitted before they were each pulled away to other conversations.

And then  Minseok  woke on the third morning to a servant smiling down at him.

“Time to rise, Highness,” the man said. “Can’t be late for your own wedding.”

♕♕♕

There was such a whirlwind of things to do – receive gifts, sit for a ferrotype, make poor Kyungsoo and Jongin race back and forth from the palace to the house multiple times a day carrying messages and small items. Talk to every third member of the nobility of seven different realms, it was exhausting.

His cousin from the south arrived abruptly on the morning of the day before. Chanyeol and his mother clutched at one another in pure shock for several minutes, and Chanyeol had never been so glad to be pulled in infinite directions and have the excuse to avoid Her Majesty of Arienne for as long as possible.

Chanyeol was a little surprised when lunch the day before the wedding was only himself, his aunt, and her spouse-by-treaty. Not that he wasn’t happy about it – his aunt had been a favorite relative when he was small, and he still remembered how much he cried when she was married away to the north. On  their infrequent visits since, Chanyeol’s uncle-by-treaty had always seemed a quietly friendly man and his aunt satisfied with the marriage.

“Chanyeollie,” his aunt said.  “ Why didn’t you write me, you silly boy? I shouldn’t b e asking you whether you have questions about a treaty-marriage the day before your wedding.”

Chanyeol blushed into his cup of mussel soup and found himself unable to  pull anything out of the swirl of thoughts in his head that might sound like a sensible question.

“Let me be awkward and intrusive as the  outlying relative,” his uncle said with a smile after several minutes. “Your aunt and I are the closest of confidants, and should her union with her lover ever prove fruitful, I will  accept that child without hesitation.”

Chanyeol choked on his  cold barley tea.

“But dearest, surely you would never keep said child from their father?” his aunt said lightly.

“Of course not,” his uncle said. “ The more people around to love a child, the  more fortunate the child. They will have the fondest of mother and three fathers, even if only one of them contributed to the siring.”

Chanyeol thought that sentence over for a moment.

“Oh!” he said .

“The four of us dine together frequently,” his aunt said. “Honestly, it was only to preserve the considerable dignity of Her Majesty of Isatis that our respective loves didn’t join us.”

“Ironic, given the habits of that land,” Chanyeol’s uncle said.

“My dear.”

“Sorry.”

His aunt  reached over and took his hand.

“Chanyeol, the princes are charming. And we’ve all heard the stories about them. I want you to find your greatest happiness, my dear, but keep in mind that that might be something other than romance with your spouses. And keep in mind as well that you’re not alone in this. You may write to me any time for advice.”

“And me,” his uncle said.

“And your cousins as well, if not perhaps  the one to the south.”

They both smiled at his cringe. Then they let him eat his lunch, keeping to idle topics for a while, until they looked at one another with a smile and Chanyeol’s uncle said,

“ Please tell me if my observations were incorrect, but it seemed as if you r blushes betrayed a certain  hopefulness at the thought of future closeness with your husbands. I wonder whether anyone has ever instructed you  as to how loving is done between men?”

The conversation that followed was so surprising and so entirely  embarrassing that Chanyeol could hardly bear to sit with Jongdae and Minseok long enough to  get a decent exposure for their official ferrotype. He had to flee from them as soon as it was over, lest he  blurt out some unforgivable comment or fall entirely to pieces.

His aunt and uncle were very kind about the whole conversation, never once teasing him for his mortification. They were also most thorough and detailed.

It made an entirely new  wing in the rooms of his imagination. When he walked into the room for their ferrotype, Chanyeol  was  unable to prevent himself from imagining  Jongdae and Minseok together, mouths and hands and … elsewheres. 

Thankfully, an afternoon of necessary rushing about, attending to last-minute details, was sufficient to allow Chanyeol to put such notions far enough in the back of his head that he could look at his fiancés without his head catching on fire. Although he did notice a desire to stand somewhat close to them and stare rather a lot. 

“Son, I know you do your duty without hesitation,” Chanyeol’s father said that evening, one arm around Chanyeol’s shoulders. “You’re walking into the unknown to keep us all safe. It’s a debt all of us can only be grateful and respect you for. And I know the princes are kind, honorable men who will do their duty toward you. But you know I wish for your happiness, my son. Whatever form that takes. And you know we’ll miss you. It’ll be so strange, that you’ll live away two-thirds of the year, and even when you’re with us, live in your own house.”

Chanyeol blinked against the sting in his eyes.

“I’m not far away at my house,” he said.

His father squeezed his shoulder.

“I know,  Yeollie.  It’s just that, even when a child grows to be as fine a person as you, it’s hard to see them make their way into the world. We’re so used to having you near to brighten our days.”

Chanyeol spent the last evening before his wedding with his parents and sister, laughing about stories from his childhood, on a pile of cushions together, each of them always in physical contact with the other s . It was so sweet and poignant that Chanyeol cried a little, until his mother teased him out of it. 

They sent him to bed early with a great deal of commentary about how ugly he’d look next to his husbands if he didn’t get sufficient beauty sleep. And Yoora, Princess Royal of Tiria, woke him in the morning by jumping on his bed.

♕♕♕

“I can’t tell whether you love the sea or hate it,” Baekhyun said the fifth time he found Jongdae staring out the window in their rooms, not having moved in many minutes.

“I can’t either.”

Baekhyun pulled him away from the window, turned him around and straightened his collar in the standard tactic of putting him under examination. Jongdae scowled at Baekhyun’s shoulder.

“It’s not a symbol of anything, Dae,” he said softly. “It’s just the sea. Don’t work yourself into more worry than you need. I’m not going anywhere. Joonie and Xing aren’t going anywhere. Min’s not going anywhere, and neither is your family. We’re just making room to let in a very nice man.”

Jongdae turned away, but Baek held his arm and wouldn’t let him return to brooding at the ocean.

“You’ve more official duties, Highness,” he said, and pulled Jongdae down the hall.

Before the doors to the room where he had to sit for more interminable hours smiling at well-wishers, Baekhyun paused.

“He’s invited us to join you at the house, after,” he said. “For the entire three weeks before you leave for Viridan. I haven’t answered yet, I didn’t know whether you might want fewer distractions.”

Jongdae gripped Baek’s arm.

“Please be there.”

Baekhyun nodded.

“Jongdae!” Chanyeol chirped as soon as he walked in. “No one’s here yet, and the public-facing door rattles. I’m just going to look out at this lovely day, in case you might like to greet Minseok.”

And he actually turned to the window, whistling with his hands behind his back. Minseok laughed but closed the distance between them swiftly, his mouth so warm that Jongdae sagged against him.

“Beloved,” Min murmured into his ear.

Jongdae breathed in the cedar-scented pomade Minseok used in his hair and felt some of his worry drain away. Minseok’s fingers were soft on his face, Minseok’s back firm under his hands.

“This separation nonsense is, er, nonsense,” Minseok said, and smiled.

Jongdae could only smile back. It had been so strange to wake alone in his bed. The day finally seemed as if it had started, now that he had seen Minseok’s smile.

The door rattled; they sprang apart. But as the three of them moved toward their chairs, Jongdae disregarded Chanyeol’s red face and reached out to touch the back of one hand and mouth “thank you.” Chanyeol nodded, and Jongdae saw the small smile that had been given to Minseok numerous times during their previous visit now directed at himself.

And perhaps it wasn’t quite so terrible, to sit in a room cooled by a pleasant, salt-tinged breeze and receive a parade of wishes for their future joy. Chanyeol seemed to have a particular fondness for old sailors, orphaned children, and an order of nuns called the Sisters of the Benthic Deep, if his enthusiasm was any indication. He flung himself off their dais at the representatives of these groups, with actual hugging for the nuns and the demand that Jongdae, as the resident artist, express his appreciation for a basket full of clay models of birds made by the orphans as some sort of wish for good fortune.

He looked over at Minseok, who was blinking slowly at him, wearing the expression that Jongdae knew meant that he should stop being stupid.

And maybe he could. If he could trust that Chanyeol would leave them alone each night. If he knew he could shut out the terrible sound of the ocean and sleep.

There was a huge dinner , during which Jongdeok and Yoora were successful at peeling Minseok’s sister away from their mother long enough to worm an actual smile out of her. There were more well-wishes in the morning .

In the afternoon, Chanyeol wouldn’t look either of them in the eye.  They sat for a ferrotype, and Jongdae felt Chanyeol shudder at the touch of his hand on one shoulder. He ran off without a word.

Jongdae pondered it, sitting in the bath later, as he was being scrubbed until his skin tingled, then rubbed with various fragrant, skin-softening things. Why he should be so bothered by Chanyeol’s discomfort?

Why should he be so comforted that later, Chanyeol stood close enough to  keep knocking them with his elbows?

Oh, it was maddening. He needed to speak to Minseok. He needed to be left alone to think . His family kept him close, but they were busy trying to cheer him up, and it left no room for quiet. And they wouldn’t let him drink.

“ You’ll sleep better without it,” his mother said. 

He couldn’t have slept much worse, anyway. The night stretched out, long and hot, his bed leagues too large without Minseok in it. And the servant who came to wake him in the morning teased him for his eagerness at already being up, standing at the window and staring at the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two important things to know about the conversation with his aunt & uncle:
> 
> 1\. I picture Sunny & Heechul  
2\. Alarming things were done to dinner rolls by way of illustration


	9. Chapter 9

There was nothing, really for Minseok to do other than let himself be guided through a highly choreographed routine of bath, dressing, and primping. Breakfast was plentiful, and he hoped Jongdae would eat at least some of it, or he’d be insufferable and pale by the time they got to dinner. 

“One understands that you’ve been happy in your marriage so far, Minseok,” his mother murmured in his relative direction over her cup of tea and thinly sliced toast.

“Yes, Mother,” he said when she didn’t continue.

“That’s very well,” she said. “May that continue even after this new, rather large addition.”

“You must be so relieved,” his sister said. “Now at least you have some variety, instead of just one person in your bed for the rest of your life, how tiresome.”

Minseok hummed and prayed for a change of topic. This came in the form of Yifan, bearing him off for the final touches to his uniform and hair. Minseok found himself checking and re-checking the small pocket on the front of his blue-and- steel  grey uniform where the ring for Chanyeol rested.

“Nervous, Highness?”

Was it nervousness that made his fingers drift so frequently to that pocket, that made him want to pace around the small bedroom that had housed him for the past two days?

“I suppose some measure of nerves is traditional on such an occasion,” he said.

Yifan gave one of his rare grins. His face tended to rest in a sour expression that made his smile all the brighter under hair worn long, in keeping with Minseok’s sister’s and mother’s preferences .

“Some measure indeed, if you’re pulling out the diplomat speech even in front of me,” he said. “As if you forget that I gave you your first black eye.”

Minseok laughed. He remembered that black eye well, landing on his ass in the dirt of the practice yard at eight years old , too surprised at first to register pain, such that Yifan was the one who cried first.

“Much joy to all three of you, Highness.”

“Thank you, Yifan.”

Yifan looked over at the window overlooking Tiria’s small city.

“This is a place of easy smiles,” he said.  “It’s too hot, and the wind never stops, but  the people here seem to value open hands. It seems a lucky place to start a marriage. ”

“Let’s hope so.”

And so with his mother on his arm, they went to the octagonal temple attached to the palace so Minseok could begin the next phase of his life.

♕♕♕

Chanyeol was so glad to be surrounded by people who had things for him to do all morning. First, he was required to eat, which was barely possible. Then he was required to scrub himself until his skin buzzed and anointed with various nice-smelling, slippery things. His spectacles were tucked into his bags and his face powdered. His father helped him on with his charcoal-and-red uniform: not that he had ever served in their navy, so the medals were for his various charity projects, and his rank (lieutenant) was as low as he could convince the Admiral to give him. The rings for Jongdae and Minseok went into his trouser pockets. Chanyeol held them in his hand, trying to memorize that the slightly smaller of the two was Minseok’s.

“I’m so proud of you, son,” His Majesty, King of Tiria said.

“Thanks, Papa. I hope – “

His father hugged him.

“What do you hope, Yeollie?”

Chanyeol hoped for happiness. He hoped that his husbands would make a space for him in their lives. He hoped for so many things.

“I hope this works,” he said.

His father laughed.

“Your cousin  is stubborn, but  even she has her limits. It’s going to be fine, Channie. Get through today and take them to your house . You could all do with some quiet and peace.”

Chanyeol couldn’t argue with that. He felt like his whole being was just waiting to arrive at the house and let go of a long-held breath.

They walked to the Temple of the Eight Winds:  his father at his side, his mother on his arm, Yoora just behind them. It helped Chanyeol feel brave , even i f they had to leave him in the vestibule to take their places in the pews. 

He walked with his father to the altar in the center of the eight doors for each of the eight winds. As intended, the wind ruffled his hair. The priest emerged from the northern doorway to preside over the ceremony. Chanyeol stood and waited for Minseok and Jongdae to come to him.

♕♕♕

It wasn’t anything like romantic, a treaty-marriage. Jongdae stood with his father, Chanyeol with his father, Minseok with his mother. There was a great deal of chanting, and the three reigning monarchs added their seals to the treaty document that had borne his own, Minseok’s, and Chanyeol’s seals for months. There was a long prayer for peace and cooperation. Then he slid a ring onto Chanyeol’s finger and kissed his cheeks. Watched Minseok do the same. 

Chanyeol put a narrow ring of dark metal on his finger above Minseok’s ring and leaned in to place warm lips briefly on each of his cheeks, then did the same to Min. Their parents drifted away; the three of them clasped hands, and there were more prayers, more blessings for peace and prosperity. The other visiting monarchs stepped forward to add their own well-wishes. When Her Highness of Arienne made her low-voiced, formal statement, Jongdae felt Chanyeol’s fingers twitch.

Then they were ushered onto a balcony to wave at a colorful, cheering crowd in the wind and the late-afternoon sun.

“Oh, for my dark spectacles,” Minseok said.

When Jongdae and Chanyeol laughed, the crowd  cheered louder than ever.

And then – finally a quiet moment. A small room with cold wine and fruit on the table, with Joonmyun, Minseok’s Yifan, and a small man with large, round eyes waiting for them.

“Congratulations, Highnesses,” Joonmyun said.

Jongdae leaned into his familiar embrace.

“Congratulations, Dae,” Joon whispered. “Well done. Just a bit more and you can have some quiet.”

Chanyeol introduced the small man as Kyungsoo,

“Oh, I’m your chief of staff now? How nice to have an official title,” he said with a  bright grin. “Sehun will be so furious.”

“ We’ve worked out  moving your things to the house. Baekhyun and Yifan will stay behind to attend you during the  ball . Kyungsoo and I will be back in the morning to ride over with you . It’s a lovely house, Highness,” Joonmyun said, bowing to Chanyeol. “Thank you for the invitation to stay.”

“Oh, but, Yifan, is it? I should’ve invited you to come stay as well, you’re more than welcome.”

“ Thank you, but  I’m required by Her Majesty,” Yifan said .

Jongdae watched Kyungsoo and Chanyeol notice Minseok’s grimace and tuck their questions away.

Still, it was a pleasant interlude. Pleasant to sit down and hold the cold goblet against his cheek. Pleasant to watch Minseok stand with his hands in his pockets and stare down at himself and Chanyeol with a wry smile on his face.

Dinner was long, not that the three of them got to eat much of it, given the constant interruption of well-wishers. And when it was over, Jongdae’s fears for his toes came to nothing: there were musicians, and people dancing in one corner of the room, but the newlyweds were pulled in different directions by the crowd. 

Jongdae shook hands, memorized names, and smiled. He made encouraging  or noncommittal noises as required. When he crossed paths with anyone he actually knew, he generally had a brief moment to step forward and breathe.  Once, Baekhyun put a goblet in his hand; Jongdae was gratified that it contained plain cold water.

The Tirians were all so tall that it was fruitless to try to see Minseok in the crowd. Jongdae found himself looking for Chanyeol instead, watching him make his own round of smiles and greetings. Until, after one quite long conversation with an official from one of the countries tucked into the southern jungle, Jongdae looked over to see Chanyeol in obvious distress.

His smile was a rictus, eyes as wide as at their first meeting, and  he was leaning away from his companion as if he wanted nothing more than to flee.

“Excuse me,” Jongdae said, giving his brightest smile, “ my new husband is just over there, and I haven’t greeted him in a while.”

The official laughed and patted his arm.

“Of course, Highness,” she said. “Please forgive me for keep ing you separated from him.”

Jongdae hardly knew what he was doing. How was he possibly to be of any help ? But the  panic in Chanyeol’s expression made his chest feel tight. 

He wove his way through the crowd, bowing and smiling away attempt s to draw him into conversation with flirty comments like “my new  spouse  awaits” that  would’ve made him disgusted with himself exc ept for the way that Chanyeol shook his head and held his hands in front of himself.

He arrived to find that the source of Chanyeol’s distress was Her Majesty of Arienne,  who, although a small woman, wore enough viciousness in her expression to give anyone alarm. She was reaching out, and Chanyeol leaning away, when Jongdae called out,

“There you are, husband!  To be so long separated when our wedding was scarce three hours ago seems cruel , does it not?”

Chanyeol’s head whipped around, and his mouth dropped open. Jongdae stepped forward and reached  for his hand. Chanyeol’s grip was slightly painful.

“You interrupt,” Her Majesty of Arienne spat.

Jongdae bowed.

“Apologies, Majesty,” he said. “I claim the prerogative of the newlywed , which perhaps makes less allowance for good manners. I’m afraid I find myself in need of my husband, I’m sure you’ll forgive me.”

He looked up.

“Shall we, my dear?”

Chanyeol nodded, blinking rapidly, and let Jongdae lead him to the back of the room. On the way, Jongdae caught Baekhyun’s eye and made the hand signal they’d agreed upon years before that indicated a situation, if not a dangerous one. Baek nodded and turned to move through the crowd.

“What happened?” Jongdae asked when they were up against the wall of the ballroom.

Chanyeol put one hand over his face but didn’t let go of Jongdae’s with his other.

“Let me have a minute,” he said.

He was trembling, and Jongdae found himself unable to resent the  use of his hand.  He let his thumb stroke back and forth.

Yifan was the first to arrive, putting his height to good use by standing in front of them as a shield. Baekhyun was next, Minseok in tow.

Min took one look at their clasped hands, and his eyebrows drew together. But before Jongdae could do more than think about trying to pull away, Minseok stepped forward and laid a hand on each of their arms.

“What is this?”

“Oh, Yeollie,” Yoora said behind them. “Cousin  Eunji got to you, didn’t she?”

Chanyeol dropped the hand in front of his face and nodded at the floor.

“Meaning what?” Minseok asked.

Yoora  scowled.

“Our cousin Eunji of Arienne  has strong opinions about how my brother should live his life, none of which bother to incorporate his own personal preference.”

“How unfortunate,” Minseok’s mother said from behind Yoora, scaring all of them half out of their own skins. “Autonomy is one of the main advantages of a human life, is it not?”

Minseok made a small,  cruel smile. Jongdae squeezed Chanyeol’s hand.

“One does find oneself with an overabundance of sons,” Minseok’s mother continued. “Nonetheless, one cannot allow any of them to be bullied, no matter how recent the relationship. Daughter-by-treaty, please be so good as to conduct one to this … person … who has upset my newest son.”

“ It would be my  pleasure, Majesty,” Yoora said with a curtsy.

“Well, Chanyeol,” Minseok said. “Would you prefer to slip out of our own ball early or watch my mother flay this cousin of yours with a few well-chosen words?”

“I suppose it would be terrible manners to leave our own ball so  soon ,” Chanyeol said , still at the floor .

His grip on Jongdae’s hand  remained  uncomfortably tight .

“Nonsense,” Baekhyun said. “The gossip papers will love it. They’ll spread all the most salacious rumors, everyone will be thrilled. I’ll let His Royal Highness Jongdeok know, and he’ll talk until everyone’s too exhausted to disagree.”

Chanyeol looked at Jongdae. His face was so drawn, too pale and eyes tired.

“He will,” Jongdae said. “Let’s do that , I’ve had enough noise and commotion for the day.”

“Thank you, ” Chanyeol said.

“I know where to go,” Yifan said.

Chanyeol didn’t let go of Jongdae’s hand throughout the walk to a new set of rooms, obviously set aside for them for this one night , with dim lamplight and  white curtains over the windows that fluttered in the ever-present wind. Even when they sat, Chanyeol’s grip continued, if less frantically tight.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You probably don’t want me holding your hand like this.  I just – “

“It’s all right,” Jongdae said.

He didn’t know whether it was actually all right, but he could hardly be mean when Chanyeol was this upset. 


	10. Chapter 10

Really, the expression on Chanyeol’s face had been most alarming. That Jongdae had stood so close to him, holding his hand, had been less of a surprise, if still pleasant. Jongdae never could abide anyone around him being uncomfortable, and it would do well for the long-term if he got started thinking of Chanyeol as someone under his care.

Minseok had never had cause to give the least thought to Arienne before as anything other than a geography lesson, and he found himself with a negative first impression. Chanyeol was still trembling, for hells’ sake, what had that woman said to him?

Minseok rarely enjoyed interactions with his mother, but  he trusted both her loyalty and her sense of duty. Chanyeol’s cousin would regret – was probably already deeply regretting – attracting the attention and irritation of Her Majesty of Isatis.

He stood back and watched Chanyeol and Jongdae briefly, sitting beside one another. Chanyeol had stepped out of his shoes as soon as they entered the room, and had his feet on the sofa, forehead resting on his knees. That Jongdae still had neither mocked Chanyeol for his child’s posture nor tried to pull his hand away set something loose in Minseok’s chest – a deep-set worry, now unraveled. No matter how long it might take for Jongdae to see.

“It’s all right,” Jongdae said.

Right.

Minseok pulled a chair close, to sit facing his spouses.

“Of course it’s all right,” he said. “You may recall that we were married earlier today.  I rather think that  put s us among the number of people responsible to assist you when you’re distressed, Chanyeol.”

And there was a glimmer of a smile. A loud exhale. Chanyeol let go of Jongdae’s hand and leaned back in a sprawl. Minseok threw an encouraging smile at Jongdae.

“ Tell us what this is about ,” Minseok said.

Chanyeol sighed heavily again.

“Although we’re all very happy to give our new family of Viridan and Isatis access to the sea, mostly we’re grateful for the existence of Viridanian airships to keep Arienne from running us over,” he said to his knees.

This was an item that had been covered in exactly none of the extensive negotiations leading up to their marriage. And if his expression was anything to go by,  Jongdae was on the urge of causing a storm about it.

“What does that mean?” Minseok asked.

Chanyeol groaned and dug his hands into his hair.

“It’s all my fault,” he said.

♕♕♕

Chanyeol hated having to say it all out loud – it all sounded so ridiculous. Cousin Eunji had been six years old when she first declared her intention to marry him. No one in the world would expect such a statement to mean anything. Feeling himself magnanimous and grown-up at nine, Chanyeol had agreed. And she had never given it up, though they rarely saw one another even yearly. By the time he was fourteen and the teasing his family subjected him to about “your intended cousin” started to horrify him on several discrete levels, Chanyeol took comfort in at least knowing that it wasn’t a thing he needed to actually worry about – they were both out of the line of inheritance and would marry whomever they were told, and there was no advantage to either country to ally with the other, given their already close familial ties.

Then their second cousin died in a sailing accident, and Eunji was elevated to Princess Royal of Arienne. Everyone assumed that it was shock and grief that sent their cousin’s father after him not a year later, and by the next winter, Arienne didn’t so much offer for him as demand his imminent departure.

“But why would your father turn that down, Chanyeol?” Jongdae asked. “You could’ve been a Consort, and married someone you actually know, instead of getting bound up with two strangers in a treaty-marriage.”

Chanyeol felt as if he was cringing with his entire body. There was an awful lot of him with which to cringe. 

“Her father is my uncle,” he said finally. “My mother’s younger brother.”

It occurred to him that he had no idea whether thoughts about such things were more similar in Isatis and Viridan to his own home or to Arienne.

Regardless, it was too late now. If they laughed at him, they laughed at him. They were all still stuck together anyway.

“Please help me understand,” Minseok said slowly. “Arienne is your first cousin.”

“Yes.”

“And yet she set her cap for you.”

“Yes.”

“Her first cousin.”

Oh, thank the winds, Minseok was starting to sound alarmed. Chanyeol sagged his relief.

“Do they not have any understanding of consanguinity in Arienne?” Jongdae said. “Has the sun baked their brains?”

Chanyeol had to grab his hand again. Jongdae jumped a little. Chanyeol would’ve grabbed Minseok’s too, if it had been within reach.

“That’s what we kept trying to say!” he said. “Not that it made any difference.”

Jongdae squeezed his hand in a way that Chanyeol figured he should let go. He didn’t move away, though, at least.

“And she kept it up in such a way as to concern you,” Minseok said.

Chanyeol nodded.

“Concern you personally or on a state level?”

“Er, both?”

Chanyeol watched them have a conversation of arched eyebrows and pursed lips. They’d been married for three years. How long did it take them to develop this language of facial expressions? And how long would it take him to decipher it?

If he was to hide his spectacles from them forever, he never would.

“You haven’t.  Embroiled us in a burgeoning war, I hope,” Jongdae said.

The chill in Jongdae’s tone was certainly an instructive example of why it was perhaps less  than wise  to hide one’s embarrassing personal difficulties from – persons who might find them important.

“No!” Chanyeol said. “Winds, no. She’s well and done with me now, if her comment that – “

Shuddering deeps.

He wasn’t about to say that to Minseok and Jongdae.

“ What did she say to you?” Minseok asked.

Oh, just that he may have put her off, but he had roped himself into a loveless span of life. That she hoped he’d enjoy being the eternal hanger-on, unwelcome and awkward, watching the two of them shut him out for the next several dozen years. That she would move on and he would be trapped forever, superfluous. Unwanted. Unloved.

Chanyeol shook his head.

Jongdae touched his forearm. Chanyeol looked down at that small, pale hand against the dark grey of his sleeve.

“If she weren’t your cousin , is she whom you would prefer to have married?”

“No,” Chanyeol could say with utter certainty.

“ Perhaps this would be easier for you if we were women?” Minseok asked.

The gentleness of his tone did nothing to  lessen how hot Chanyeol’s face got. But he pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“I know my duty,” he said. “I would always have married whomever I must and made the best of it. But if it were up to me, my preference would be – this.”

Jongdae drew his hand back.

Chanyeol blinked at the now-empty space on his forearm.  Jongdae couldn’t know – because he hadn’t been told – that he had just proved Cousin Eunji’s point.

Well.  It was merely the first night, after all, and only the gossip papers had any expectation of the first night of a treaty-marriage being anything exciting. He still had time to hope for something better than loneliness.

“I’m very tired,” he said. “ The door to the right of the windows leads to the room made up for you, I hope you find it comfortable.  The ride to the house isn’t far, but w e should try to leave in the morning before it gets too hot.”

Chanyeol was at the door to his own room, to the left of the windows, when Minseok called out his name. Chanyeol turned – their blurred shapes hadn’t moved , but he couldn’t see their expressions .

“Good night,” he said.

He  _ was _ tired, and glad to strip out of his stiff uniform and stand in front of the breeze in nothing but a pair of linen sleep pants, letting the breeze cool him off. He was glad to wash his face and blow out the lamp to let his weary eyes rest.

And it wasn’t as if an empty bed was anything new. He’d slept alone nearly every night of his life.

Sleep was still a long time coming.

♕♕♕

Jongdae hardly knew what to think. About anything, really, other than the fact that he was also tired.

He especially didn’t want to think about why Chanyeol’s sad expression should upset him so.

“ Come on, love,” Minseok said .

Jongdae followed him through the door to the right of the windows , into a  dimly lit bedroom .

“This is a damn sight less awkward than our first night married,” Minseok said as he unbuttoned his coat.

Jongdae made himself remember that night,  each  of them curled along the outer edge of a single bed, as far apart as they could make themselves. His own rudeness in ignoring  Min’s attempts a t simple polite conversation.  The couches  and chaises  he had slept on for the first few weeks, until  Minseok had called his bluff, demanded that they at least trade off nights of discomfort for the remainder of their  wedding trip.

“We can have separate chambers in both our homes, Jongdae, but I won’t  test my new mother of Viridan’s kindness by arriving there with you looking as if you haven’t slept in a month.  We can make a line of pillows down the center if you cannot trust that I won’t touch you,” Minseok had said.

Jongdae could still recall the hot rush of his shame.

And, of course, by the time they had arrived at the palace of Viridan,  pretty much the only thing Jongdae wanted was for Minseok to touch him. All the time.

“It was thoughtful of him to arrange this,” Jongdae said.

“He does appear to be a very thoughtful man.”

For another thing Jongdae didn’t know what to think about. Thoughtful ought to be an encouraging quality in a spouse, oughtn’t it? But  Jongdae’s discomfort ate at him.

“I wish he’d told us what Arienne said to him.”

Minseok  squeezed his hand, smiled at him, and started to unbutton his  shirt .

“As do I,” Min said.  “ I  was distressed by how abruptly he left us.”

Jongdae surprised himself by how  briefly jealousy raised its head at that statement. The memory of that sad expression on Chanyeol’s face was too new,  as  was  that of his relief and the grip of his hand in the ballroom.

“Do try not to brood,” Min said. “We have a lifetime to work on him until he tells us, and, it appears, an early ride in the morning.”

With Minseok’s arms around him, the noise of the sea didn’t keep Jongdae awake. Minseok roused him early with a kiss, but even before he was fully awake, Jongdae’s nervousness had wound him like a spring. To this house by the water, where there would be no distractions from one another for three weeks. Then they would be in one another’s pockets for a trip winding through each of the three countries, then back here to Tiria for an entire third of a year. They wouldn’t go back to Viridan until autumn. 

There was nothing to be done but get through it. Jongdae rose and dressed for riding and whatever strange future awaited.

Chanyeol was in the sitting room, wearing a flowing outfit like the one he’d worn at the airyards, in shades of earth’s pigments: sand, ochre, and sienna. Bare-footed and pacing. His face looked blotchy, and Jongdae wondered whether he had been crying.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve asked last night,” Chanyeol said. “I thought I would breakfast with whoever of our parents might be awake, before we leave. But I can have  some food sen t here, if you’d rather not join me.”

“I think that’s a splendid idea,” Minseok said.  “Jongdae?”

Jongdae nodded. Chanyeol pulled on a pair of soft-looking brown boots and led them  to a small dining room populated by both Chanyeol’s and Jongdae’s families and Minseok’s sister.

“Well, you three at least have the excuse of having left to retire at a reasonable hour, I don’t know what  any of us are thinking,” Chanyeol’s father said, rising to embrace his son and shake hands with Jongdae and Minseok.

“I’m up to make sure as many people as possible see my new gown,” Jongdae’s mother said.

She rose to twirl  her Tirian-style gown  in  a wave of floating green silk. Jongdae ’s tension spun away with her.

“Mama, you look lovely,” he said when she stopped spinning in front of him and kissed his cheek.

“Good morning, darling. Good morning to all my sons,” she said, and held out her hands to Minseok and Chanyeol.

“I’m so comfortable, I declare I shall never wear anything else.”

“It might not be quite enough clothing during the winter,” Jongdae’s father said with a grin.

“Nonsense. I shall procure one of those horrid bearskin coats the northern fur-trappers wear and belt it around myself for the duration of the season.  I’ll be so comfortable and in possession of such deep breaths that I won’t even care to look a fright.”

The only person who didn’t laugh at this speech was Minseok’s sister, who simply looked perplexed at th e display of good humor, until Yoora took her arm and  she produced a tentative smile.

“We don’t have nearly the cold you do,” Chanyeol’s mother said as they all took their seats . “All I need do generally is pop on a coat like the one Yeollie and my husband are wearing.  There are quilted ones for the coldest days.”

The talk of clothing that followed was spirited and long – Jongdae wasn’t a bit surprised that his father and brother had similar envy about the comfort level of Tirian clothes.  He picked at a plate of fruit and some kind of thin, sweetened porridge and mostly watched Yoora having a conversation of glares with her brother across the table.

By the time the two queens at the table had promised one another a vigorous fashion-based correspondence,  Chanyeol’s father had been staring at them all rather wistfully for several minutes.

“I suppose we should release you to your new home soon,” he said when he caught Jongdae’s glance.

“ Ah, the final breakfast before one’s child embarks on their adult life is bittersweet, is it not?” Jongdae’s father said .

The scrutiny of their parents and siblings made Jongdae squirm, until Minseok took his and Chanyeol’s hands.

“We will do our best to make you proud,” he said.

Jongdae squeezed Min’s fingers. What a good thing one of them was keeping his head clear.

“None of us has the slightest doubt of that,” Jongdae’s mother said .

The round of hugs took long enough that Joonmyun, Kyungsoo, and Baekhyun  came in and went away again twice. Yoora took Chanyeol away briefly for a conference. When he returned, he looked less blotchy, so whatever she said must’ve been encouraging, at least. Minseok’s sister even embraced him briefly, though she followed it with a low-voiced comment that made him wince at her grin.

Jongdae clung to his parents as much as he dared without looking like a fool. His mother chucked him under the chin.

“Let this be easy, my love,” she whispered in his ear. “As much as you can.”


	11. Chapter 11

The morning sun was hot but not blistering when they set out. Minseok was, as ever, thankful for the dark spectacles. Chanyeol also produced a broad-brimmed hat for himself, which only added to his piratical aura, and it was only vanity, knowing how ridiculous it would look with his riding habit, that prevented Minseok  from  asking for a hat of his own.

They rode for just a little more than an hour, Minseok thought – a paved road through the palace grounds and through the wall on the southern side, instead of east toward the airyard. They had a bit of an audience through the small portion of city they passed, but then the road became a sandy path on a cliffside that sloped gradually downhill. The six of them were largely silent the whole way. The sea came ever closer, and Minseok watched Jongdae frown at it until Morningstar danced with his agitation.

They passed a place where a long spar of rock jutted out into the sea . On the other side of it, the water was the blue-green of a jewel , with low, gentle waves washing up onto pale sand that gave way to grass-covered dunes. They rounded a corner.

“Here we are,” Chanyeol said.

By royal standards, the house was small, though it was larger than the lodge he and Jongdae shared in Isatis: three-storied, of red brick with black and white trim, striped awnings over the windows facing west. A small guest house lay on the far side, a stable and a garden in the back. There was a small windmill: Minseok wondered what it powered.

A startingly handsome groom emerged to help with the horses – except that Chanyeol introduced him as,

“This is Jongin , my, er – “

“I suppose I could let him be assistant chief of staff,” Kyungsoo said with a grin.

Jongin was so handsome that even his rude face was attractive.

“Personal assistant?” Baekhyun supplied. “That’s what they call me, when they’re feeling favorable in my direction.”

“Oh no,” Jongin said .

His grin was quite arresting.

“Sehun would  hire pirates to press-gang me if there’s a personal assistant position and he doesn’t get to fill it.  I’m content to just be Jongin . Welcome and congratulations, Highnesses.”

He hugged Chanyeol warmly. Their new spouse certainly did appear to inspire affection from those around him.

Minseok noted silence when he had prepared himself for otherwise and sidled up close to Chanyeol.

“No dogs?”  he asked quietly.

Chanyeol’s blush was deep enough that  Minseok could see it even with his dark spectacles on.

“No, I sent them home,” he said. “I found I needed the stable for something else, come see. Jongin, you don’t mind taking all these horses yourself ?”

“Not one bit, Yeollie, uh, Highness.”

Baekhyun  and Kyungsoo laughed.

“Well,” Chanyeol said out of a bright red face, “ they’re stuck with me now, and they’re about to learn that if I don’t have any official business, I can barely be convinced to wear a shirt and not at all convinced to wear shoes, so I suppose you don’t need to bother pretending that anyone around here  fusses about  rank.”

Minseok had to join the laughter at that, and even Jongdae went far enough to make a tentative smile.

Minseok’s smile dropped off his face from sheer surprise when they  turned  the corner to find a shady overhang of the stable with a level floor of stone flags and a canvas bag hanging from the ceiling beam , identical to the sand-filled training bags at his boxing gyms in Viridan and Isatis.

“That’s for me?” he said, hearing his voice high with surprise.

Minseok  lost track of his knees briefly.  Who in the world was this person whom they had married?

“Is it the right kind?” Chanyeol asked. “I went to a boxing gym in town. And really, I must say,  it made me somewhat terrified of you. But I have …”

He patted his pockets. Kyungsoo, with a wry expression on his face, pulled a small case from his own pocket and from that a sheet of paper.

“Oh, thanks, Soo.  Anyhow, they said this is what you need if you want to train on your own. Here’s the address, though. Any of us can help you find  the gym, if you wish to go. They’ll be on the lookout for you.”

Minseok stared down at the address in his hand.  It was meaningless to him, that combination of letters and numbers in a well-schooled hand. And it was simultaneously a thing  that renewed th e trembling hope he had borne at the end of Chanyeol’s visit to Viridan.

“ Chanyeol. This is so kind. It’s perfect,” he said.

“Oh, well,” Chanyeol said. “You haven’t even tested it first, it might be all wrong. Do you have the other page, too?”

Kyungsoo handed another sheet to Jongdae.

“I know we’re only here for three weeks this time, but just in case, I thought you might want  painting supplies. This is supposed to be the best shop in the city , ” Chanyeol said.

“Oh,” Jongdae said. “Thank you.”

Minseok gripped Jongdae’s wrist until Dae looked at him. Jongdae nodded.

“This is  very kind,” Minseok repeated.

“Come see the house.”

♕♕♕

Finally. Chanyeol was so pleased that everything was over and he could finally show them the house . They could finally be quiet, and find some way to be together in that quiet.  Surely they could find a version of together that would at least be comfortable. Maybe even friendly.

He hadn’t slept well and had woken early. Had stared, brooding, at their closed bedroom door. And then relaxed into the comfort of their families chatting so happily over breakfast. Jongdae had smiled so beautifully at his mother’s display. Minseok had smiled so beautifully at Jongdae.

Yoora had fussed so much, fixing his terrible job with the powder on his face.

And really, the next time they had to go anywhere on horseback,  he must arrange for proper hats for his – his husbands, so they wouldn’t bake in the sun.

It was so good to show them the house. When he showed Minseok the training bag and gave them each the sheets of paper, he thought their stunned expressions must be positive. They trooped behind him into the kitchen, and Chanyeol felt himself flush when, as he stripped off his boots, Minseok made use of the boot jack to pull off his own and set them by the door.

Toben ran  to them , and Chanyeol scooped him up before he could jump at anyone’s knees. But  they both smiled at his tiny, wiggly greeting. Jongdae went so far as to offer  knuckles to sniff and lick. Jongdae visibly relaxed at the sight of Yixing, rising from his seat next to Sehun at the table.

“Have you all settled in?” Chanyeol asked, to nods among the Viridanians.

“The house is lovely,” Joonmyun said. “I already feel at home .”

Chanyeol allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. If Jongdae’s staff liked the house, there was a fish in his net already. Three fishes. 

“The staff’s quite small,” he said as they trooped  into the front hall, Jongdae’s boots clacking on the wooden floors. “But of course I can hire more if you find it inadequate. I’ve just . Found that I liked doing for myself, as I was readying this place.”

“I want to hear about that,” Minse ok said. “Perhaps when we’ve settled in somewhat.”

Chanyeol had to duck his head .

“All right.”

He showed them the sitting room, with its several chairs and piles of cushions, the formal dining room that he doubted anyone would ever use.

“Jongdae, you r studio is at the end of the hall,” he said with a wave. “I hope it’ll suit.”

He watched Jongdae crane his neck . His fingers twitched with nervousness. They climbed the stairs.

“Your people are upstairs,” he said when they got to the second-floor landing. “This is us. My room s.”

He gestured to his own door.

“Minseok’s, a bath, and Jongdae’s,” he said . “Connected through the bath, of course.”

And then the brave part, which made so much sense when he had said it to himself earlier and made him feel crazy with  nerves now. Chanyeol took a steeling breath.

“I’ll leave you here. I need to speak with Kyungsoo about some things, and I’m sure you’d like to settle in, and perhaps have a rest after our hot ride.  I’ll see you soon.”

He bowed without looking at either of them and ran back down the stairs.

It wasn’t a lie – he wanted to check in on the horses, and make sure everyone’s belongings had arrived safely and been unpacked. Not that he doubted it. He just wanted to check.

“And there’s  cold water and fruit in everyone’s room,” Kyungsoo said, smiling at him. “Including yours. ”

“I don’t know which I want to see first, our room or this dinner setup on the beach,” Baekhyun said.

“ You’ll see the room every day, let’s go look at the beach,” Joonmyun said.

They walked down to the beach. The firepit wasn’t much to look at, mostly being a  patch of greyish-looking seagrass mats that with smoke dribbling out and several covered buckets of future dinner.

“So fascinating,” Joonmyun said. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

“You may actually learn to relax here,” Yixing said.

“I never have before, I’m not sure why you think I’m capable.”

Chanyeol had to hang onto Sehun’s arm briefly. Surely, if their friends were already comfortable, Minseok and Jongdae would be too.  He had come to love this place so much, readying it for them. Oh, he wanted so badly for them to like it too.

“I’ve heard it’s the custom during the summer here to spend the heat of midday napping,” Yixing said. “I know how early Joonmyun and Kyungsoo rose this morning, and I imagine that the past weeks have been less than restful for Chanyeol. I propose that we let local traditions guide us.”

“Having been away from both my spouses for the better part of three days, I agree,” Baekhyun said.

Having been away from his spouses for the better part of an hour, Chanyeol also agreed, not that he thought he was going to  lie down with them behind the shade of a curtain to doze away the hot hours. But he liked the thought of them being nearby.

♕♕♕

Jongdae found that he had an opinion after all about Chanyeol abruptly disappearing on them: he didn’t like it.  He didn’t like that he didn’t like it, though, to the point that he declined to dig down to determine why it was so.

He rather though t , from Minseok’s scowl at the stairwell, that he felt the same way.

“Well, we’ll examine our rooms, I suppose,” Minseok said.

And for all his talk of togetherness, he pushed Jongdae toward the farther door. Jongdae huffed, but he went.

It was a lovely room, with tall windows and pale wooden floors, done up in shades of Viridanian green. The dressing table had his things on it already; his sketchbook lay on the small desk by one window. The room was large, the bed as big as theirs in Viridan, if slightly smaller than the one in Isatis – though the one in Isatis was rather excessive, as Isatians always seemed to plan for a crowd.

Jongdae opened the clothes press to see not only his own summer wardrobe but also a number of pale, loose things: simple trousers with drawstring waists, long-sleeved or sleeveless tunics of linen so fine it was almost transparent, and a couple of the long coats like those Chanyeol wore.

He tried to imagine himself wearing such things and failed. But at the same time, sweating in his riding habit, Jongdae felt knocked off-balance again, by these things given without fanfare , such that he could use them or not as he willed, without embarrassment.

It was such a quiet welcome.

The only deviation from shades of white and green was pale blue on one pillow of the bed, pale green on the other side. Unfolding the small pile, Jongdae found a  sleeveless tunic with deep-cut armholes and a pair of  somewhat short pants.  Sleepwear, obviously. In Isatian blue. Left a-purpose in his room.

He was still scowling at them when Minseok’s voice called out,

“Did you see the clothes he left, love?”

Jongdae turned, still holding the blue sleeping clothes, and watched Min’s eyebrows draw together. He walked over and took them from Jongdae’s hands.

“These were here?” he asked.

“On the pillow. Were there any in your room?”

Minseok shook his head, then sighed.

“He really does mean to let us go on as we have, it seems.”

A room set aside for the two of them on their wedding night, sleepwear for both of them on this one bed in his house.

“Yes.”

“That makes me angry,” Minseok said. “And I’m not sure why.”

Jongdae could only nod his agreement.

They examined the bath together  – modern and pretty, in tiles of white, blue and green that brought to mind the color of the ocean outside the windows but also bridged the colors of their two countries and made Jongdae more annoyed than ever.

There was a knock, and Joonmyun strode in  smiling.

“I’m amazed that you’re both still so buttoned up,” he said. “I’ve just been down to the beach , I think we’ll all find the evening very interesting. But for the moment, we’re adhering to local custom and retiring during the worst of the heat. Is there anything you need ?”

“No, your day has been busier than ours, you should rest,” Jongdae said.

Minseok laughed after he left.

“Now that he’s said it, I can’t stand to be buttoned up another minute.”

He pulled off his jacke t and  undid his collar.

“Shall we follow everyone’s lead, my love?”

Jongdae looked at the curve of his throat , the way he cocked his hip in a familiar invitation. He stepped forward to kiss Minseok for the first time since they woke that morning and sighed into his mouth.

“I want to go snoop briefly.”

Minseok smiled.

“I’ll be here .”

There was no boot jack in his room, so Minseok helped him pull his boots off so he could pad down the stairs in his stocking feet.

Jongdae didn’t know why he felt the need to sneak . It was supposed to be his studio, after all. But pain ting was the only thing he had only ever done solely for himself. He didn’t think of himself as particularly good at it, but if he went more than a few days without painting, his hands would start to ache for the feel of the brush.

Minseok was the only person he ever talked to about it, other than the painting master he had had as a boy.  It was private.  He knew himself to be touchy about it. So his inevitable disappointment needed to be managed before he  had to say anything to Chanyeol.

Except:  it was wonderful. 

Oh, the room wasn’t perfect. It was in a corner with windows facing west and south, so the light would change color drastically throughout the day, but what light it would be. There was a drafting table in one corner, with a good oil lamp set next to it, a cabinet next to the door. Otherwise, the room was bare, with white curtains tied back from the windows.

And in the center of the room, the most beautiful easel he had ever seen. 

An easel was just a tool to him, usually. He wanted one big enough for flexibility and sturdy enough  to remain still even in the presence of a frustrated artist who might stomp his foot. This was both, but also, it was finely carved and varnished in  a warm gold. The tops of each  vertical bar were  scrolled like a violin , and the clamp bars  carved  like waves.

Jongdae ran his hands over it, feeling the warmth and smoothness of the wood . He couldn’t imagine where Chanyeol had found such a thing. It made him eager to work . Already, this room felt like a space he could inhabit.

He thought, climbing the stairs again: did he want that? A space in which he was comfortable here?

The part of him well trained by tutors and ministers pointed out that for the rest of his life he’d spend a third of each year in Tiria;  he might as well find a way to feel at home. If only such things were so easy.

Minseok was asleep when he slipped back into his room, stripped down to those blue sleep pants, one arm thrown over his face. Jongdae removed his coat and shirt and lay next to him with a mind full of easels, addresses, linen, sudden absences. A tangle with no free end that he could tug at and try to unravel.


	12. Chapter 12

Minseok had not enjoyed the amount of roasting he had done so far in Tiria, but to wake with a warm breeze over his skin in the late-afternoon sunlight, filtered through pale curtains to wash over the planes of Jongdae’s face, was no small pleasure. He traced his fingertips over Dae’s cheeks until Dae’s eyes fluttered open.

And then the slow opening of Dae’s eyes was followed by the slow curve of his mouth, which must be kissed. The stress and separation of the past few days rushed back at the moment Jongdae rolled over to press his body close, and Minseok fell into the familiar comfort of his hands on Jongdae’s skin, Jongdae’s flavor under and in his mouth. With no idea who was in the house or how sound carried within it, they moved in whispers, silent shudders into one another’s fists, legs tangled together.

But the sound of voices outside gradually made itself known while they kissed their way to calmer breath. Minseok watched wariness flicker its way back into Jongdae’s eyes at the sound of Chanyeol’s voice, though the words themselves were carried away by distance and wind. Minseok kissed him.

“We’ll be back in this bed soon enough,” he said.

Minseok examined the Tirian clothing in his closet but couldn’t quite bring himself to put it on, this first day, with what lay ahead so unclear. Surely they were meant to be comfortable at home, and the afternoon continued warm.

“Dae, do you think my linen hacking jacket?” he said, stepping into Jongdae’s room.

He had to grin, seeing the same item in question on Jongdae. Jongdae’s mouth twisted wryly.

“Perhaps I’ll leave it off and go down in my shirtsleeves,” Minseok said. “It wouldn’t do to look too much like a matched set, I suppose.”

And Jongdae would want the greater armor of more clothing. Even now, he was tugging at his jacket hem. Minseok kissed him again, both to give and receive courage.

They met Jongin downstairs, who grinned and herded them down to the beach, where the sun was low over the water and smoke trickled up off the ground next to a more traditional sort of fire, with low chairs and cushions set around. Joonmyun and Yixing were talking to Sehun, peering down at the mats from which the smoke came. Baekhyun was inexplicably standing knee-deep in the water, already dressed in a Tirian coat.

Chanyeol jogged toward them, wearing the sort of clothing he had left in their wardrobes – slim, dark linen trousers above bare feet, a sleeveless tunic the color of the sand around them. A smile under his dark spectacles.

Minseok took a moment to wonder what Chanyeol did with his time that would result in such muscle definition in his arms.

He took another moment to savor the thought of Jongdae's obvious pleasure in touching his own examples of muscle definition, and how interesting it might be to add Chanyeol to that mix.

He wondered what it would take to convince Jongdae of the merits of such an idea.

“I hope you had a good rest,” Chanyeol said. “Will you come sit?”

They would, on clever little chairs that had hardly any legs at all, nestled into the sand. They would take silver tumblers of cold white wine.

“I think these chairs are for our benefit,” Yixing said with a smile. “We’ll all have to work on our lower backs, to become accustomed to sitting on cushions like the natives.”

“And to not wearing shoes,” Joonmyun said.

Minseok looked around and discovered that he and Jongdae were the only ones shod.

“It’s the sand,” Kyungsoo said. “It gets everywhere anyway, may as well minimize the number of places it can settle.”

“I swear we do actually live like civilized people in town,” Sehun said across the sand.

Baekhyun shouted, and all conversation halted while Kyungsoo waded out to help reel in the fish Baekhyun had apparently caught. Fish was rare in Viridan; Minseok sat back to let Jongdae lean in and watch the progression that took them from a thrashing, slippery creature to a thing impaled on a metal rod next to the fire, destined for dinner. By the end of that, Minseok had bent to custom sufficiently to remove his shoes. When he dug his toes in, the sand was cool. Mostly, he watched Jongdae watch Baekhyun laugh.

Chanyeol brought the wine bottle over and refilled their tumblers, topped off his own, and sat between them. The sun was low enough that he had pushed his dark spectacles up into his hair.

“I suppose we need to talk about the household, to make sure things run in a way that you both find comfortable,” he said. “But Baekhyun said that you don’t get much seafood in Viridan. I thought you might find this novel. Is that also true in Isatis?”

Minseok caught Jongdae staring at Chanyeol through half-lidded eyes over the rim of his silver wine cup.

“Viridan is dry, Isatis less so. We have river trout, and freshwater mussels, on occasion.”

“I hope it doesn’t taste too strange.”

“I’m sure it’ll be lovely,” Minseok said.

It was certainly all strange – soup made of seaweed bubbling on the fire, and raw things like mussels but with markedly different shells. Baekhyun’s fish, roasted until the skin was crispy, each of them pulling the sweet flesh apart with their fingers, as delicate as anything Minseok had ever tasted.

Then the Tirians lifted the mats from the sand and smoke billowed up. From a pit dug in the ground they lifted layers of food: more bivalves, crabs, whole fish, then sausages and potatoes, all roasted in a slow fire for most of the afternoon. All of it so surprising, cooked in a hole in the ground but still delicious. Jongdae forgetting to worry, laughing and tossing his jacket on the chair back while Chanyeol taught him how to get into the crabs.

Minseok couldn’t remember a meal so easy in his life. Baekhyun was curious about everything, and Yixing had a naturally relaxed manner that helped conversation flow like the water around them. The Tirians were obviously used to working together, reflected in the smoothness with which they managed the fires and the food. Minseok caught Joonmyun watching their efficiency with an approving eye.

Minseok caught himself noticing his own sense of approval of how Chanyeol never hesitated to join in and help.

♕♕♕

Chanyeol couldn’t have been more pleased with the success of the evening. It would take some doing to learn not to become briefly stuck senseless by the sight of Minseok in shirtsleeves with an open collar, and even Jongdae had been slightly less formally dressed when they followed Jongin to the shore, hand in hand. They seemed, like their staff had been, ready to see something new, maybe even ready to be pleased.

He watched how Jongdae watched Baekhyun, how he took cues from both him and Minseok, how the two of them kept a close eye on him. How all of the inlanders, if they were close, would lay a hand briefly on Jongdae's arm or shoulder. Curious.

But mostly Chanyeol found himself smiling until his cheeks ached. Both Minseok and Jongdae hated raw oysters enough that they could barely be polite about it, which made their later surprise over roasted clams that much more endearing. And the look of delight on Jongdae’s face at his first bite of crab was almost enough to inspire Chanyeol to abandon his own meal in favor of retrieving every possible shred of meat from every single crab.

They examined the roasting pit; Jongdae asked Kyungsoo numerous questions about the entire process, just as Chanyeol remembered doing the first time he’d had a meal like this as a child, on the beach with his tutor’s family, the rare treat of an outing away from the palace. This was followed by a disastrous attempt with his father to recreate it later, until laughing servants stepped in to show their bumbling royals how it was done. Chanyeol wondered whether he would ever tell Jongdae and Minseok how many times he, Kyungsoo, Jongin, and Sehun had test-run this dinner on this very beach in the past several months, just to make sure it would turn out perfect.

As the sun set over the water, he watched his husbands start to forget the strangeness and simply enjoy themselves. Simply smile, which had been his intention. He’d have to think up more ways to inspire those smiles. He wanted to see them every day.

“How do you keep producing these magically cold drinks?” Minseok asked the second time Jongin slipped back into the firelight with damp bottles of wine in his hands.

“There’s a cold room under the stable,” Chanyeol said. “I was able to sweet-talk a nice block of ice from the palace, I know you’re not used to the heat.”

“Sweet talk, hm?” Minseok said in a low voice.

That low tone was just starting to hit Chanyeol and heat up his ears when Jongdae saved him with,

“And the windmill?”

Turning to look at Jongdae was not any better than looking at Minseok. The play of firelight over their faces was just damned unfair.

“That’s for the water. There’s a small power sink attached to it as well, that can heat just enough hot water for two full tubs in a day. So I suppose we’ll have to fight every day to see who gets the cold bath,” Chanyeol said, grinning, “unless, of course, the both of you plan to –“

Really, his imagination was too much. Did anyone ask for his mind to be overwhelmed by the mental image of Minseok and Jongdae in the bath together? No one did. Even knowing that the bath was big enough for it. One especially didn’t ask for the suspicion that the bath was large enough for himself and one of them. Nor for this rush of feeling that made his breath go shallow and his cock twitch.

“I should go check on the fire,” he said.

The coals in the firepit were dying down just as they should, but at least looking down at them, onlookers would expect his face to look heated. Even if standing next to the coals felt less hot than had sitting on the cool sand between them.

♕♕♕

“Unless the both of us plan to what? Fuck in the bath?” Minseok murmured in Jongdae’s ear. “How could he know how much you love that, I wonder?”

Jongdae shuddered and gripped Minseok’s knee in warning. Minseok grinned.

It had been something to see, the way Chanyeol’s eyes had gone wide and he bit his bottom lip, halfway through that mildly suggestive statement.

Jongdae sat back and hid behind his tumbler of wine, fingers tangled with one husband’s and watching the other bend over a dying fire that Jongdae knew needed no attention at all. His hair looked redder than ever in the firelight, his body long and lean in those clothes that covered him so lightly, left his arms bare.

The evening had been unlike anything Jongdae had ever known: Baekhyun’s shocked laughter, standing in the water, all that food coming up out of the ground, cold white wine, and the sweetness of crab, plucked from Chanyeol’s fingers while he sat cross-legged, his face so serious, teasing out shreds of crabmeat with a little pick.

He was sitting on a beach in his shirt sleeves, in the wind, and the sound of the waves had receded to background noise.

Yixing announced his intention to go back to the house for his guitar.

“Sehun, will you get mine as well?” Chanyeol asked.

The Tirians cleaned up while they were gone, gathering the piles of shells and bones. Minseok tried to rise from their low chairs.

“No, don’t bother with it,” Chanyeol said.

“We aren’t guests,” Minseok said. “However new, this is to be home.”

Jongdae watched that small smile unfold across Chanyeol’s face.

“You let me be your guest for one afternoon,” he said. “Let me spoil you now.”

Minseok dropped back into the chair, then turned to gaze at Jongdae once Chanyeol had turned away. The dim light of the fire highlighted Min’s cheeks and his narrow chin, made shadows of his eyes.

One day. A good day: but still. Just the first one.

Neither of them was able to resist pulling their chairs closer to the fire once Yixing and Sehun returned and the music started. So many of their evenings in Viridan were spent listening to Yixing talk about or play music, sometimes in three-part harmony with his spouses. Minseok reading, himself sketching or simply listening, his head resting on Minseok’s knee.

The Tirians applauded wildly after the first song.

“Soo, you’re not the only tenor in a wilderness of baritones anymore!” Jongin cried out.

“Finally Yeollie’s done something useful,” Kyungsoo said.

Chanyeol laughed with his full self, loud and bright. Jongdae found himself smiling at it, until the point that Chanyeol leaned over and knocked into Sehun, who put both arms around him and pressed their heads together.

That brief vexation disappeared when Chanyeol bent over his guitar and started to sing. His deep voice was strong and clear, with Kyungsoo a smooth harmony above it. The song was as melancholy as Jongdae had felt the wind to be, staring at the grey sea from the palace, so different from the clear water they sat by now in the dark. He joined in the applause at the end of it.

“Are many of your folk songs in minor keys?” Yixing asked once the clapping stopped.

“Lots of them are. Sailors’ songs, you know, about missing home and the cruelty of the sea,” Chanyeol said.

The next few hours were simply songs volleyed back and forth, as each song one side sang reminded the other side of another until yawns overtook notes.

“This is a damned sight more comfortable than the first time you got married,” Baekhyun laughed after they’d been sent back up to the house, the Tirians insisting on carrying everything back themselves.

Jongdae grimaced, and Baek put an arm around his waist.

“That was meant to be a compliment, Dae,” he said. “You were actually friendly for a noticeable part of the evening! I’m sure I even saw you smile more than twice. Must be Minseok’s good influence.”

Jongdae stepped on his foot.

“They want so much for us to like them,” Joonmyun said.

“For my part, they’re succeeding,” Baek said. “It helps that they’re all so very easy to look at.”

“That it does,” Yixing said, and the two of them were chased down the hallway by Joon.

“Good, my love?” Minseok asked when they lay down together.

Jongdae took the fingers tracing his cheek and kissed them.

“It was lovely.”

And it was. He could admit that, lying in the darkness with Minseok’s head tucked under his chin, hearing the sounds of the Tirians clattering around downstairs, Chanyeol calling out “good night,” and then the quiet thrum of waves. Better by far than that first awkward night three years ago. He could deal with this much change: a quiet house, friendly faces, time to adjust. With Min and Baek nearby.

Jongdae was less confident in his ability to manage the next morning, as he stood by the window watching the way the morning light pulled the sea from black toward green, and Chanyeol walked up the path, shirtless, in wet, clinging trousers, shaking hair out of his face. The heat that flashed through Jongdae made him grip the windowsill.

He could tell Min about it, surely. Minseok would smile slowly, and kiss him. Wrap him close and fuck him, and Min’s delight would be as bright as his smile. He would rise up from this bed – maybe they would rise up together out of it, hand in hand, to step to the other end of the hall. But then they would never be alone, just the two of them, ever again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CLAMBAKE


	13. Chapter 13

Of course Jongdae was quiet in the morning; Minseok expected nothing less. He would open and draw back again until his feet felt steady under him. It was no hardship to stand with his arms around Jongdae as he brooded out the window, nor to kiss and coddle him into dressing for breakfast.

“Husbands,” Chanyeol groaned the instant they stepped foot into the kitchen. “I beg you to save me from your horrible  assistant.”

Baekhyun cackled.

“Everyone else likes the gossip papers, what’s wrong with you, Highness?”

Whether it was Baekhyun’s nonsense, reading the lurid (and flattering) write-up of their wedding in an affected accent; Chanyeol’s moaning into his hands with embarrassment; or the crab porridge set in front of them, by the time the kitchen was full of their staff, chattering around the dark wood of the table, Jongdae had ceased crushing his ankle against Minseok’s.

“Yeollie, did I see you down at the beach at dawn?” Jongin asked. “Why would you still be up that early now that you don’t have to?”

“I’m used to it now,” Chanyeol said with a wave.

Minseok felt Jongdae grip his elbow under the table.

“But why in the world?”  Jongdae  asked.

And why in the world would asking that question make Jongdae rigid with tension again? Minseok needed a locked door and a couple of uninterrupted hours to get Jongdae out of his head and make him say aloud what had him so perturbed.

“Chanyeol’s been working us like farmhands for months,” Sehun said. “Between all the lost sleep and all the physical labor, my looks are ruined forever, I’m sure.”

“Oh, not at all!” Joonmyun exclaimed , then turned red under the jeering of his spouses and Jongin and Kyungsoo’s rolled eyes.

Minseok wondered what the staff had gotten up to, those days when they had been preparing for the  royals’ arrival. How interesting. Still,

“What sort of physical labor?” 

“Well, you know this place didn’t have a single solid window when Chanyeol bought it,”  Sehun said.

“Oh, it was a wreck,” Kyungsoo said. “I couldn’t believe he was serious when he said he wanted to fix it up.”

Minseok watched Chanyeol blush down at the table , wearing his soft smile.

“Hold on,” he said.

When Chanyeol skidded back into the room, he  carried  a  carved wooden box .

“These were holding the front door on back then,” he said, and handed over a couple of stiff, filthy,  ragged leather straps.

“Holding on the door?” 

Jongdae  echoed Minseok’s disbelief. Chanyeol nodded.

The story of the house took up the rest of the morning and through lunch, given all the questions on the part of the Viridanians and the enthusiasm of the Tirians. It was such a charming story, too, the four of them living out here on the beach together, the novelty and occasional horror of living rough and trying to learn enough to assist workers instead of impeding them.

“It helped that I’m not noble-born,” Kyungsoo said. “I actually had a few  useful life skills when we started.”

“ The ability to boil water without melting the pot,” Jongin said,  t o everyone’s laughter.

“I’m not noble-born  either, just rich enough to be helpless up until four months ago,” he continued.

“How did you come to be Chanyeol’s staff, then?” Minseok asked.

“I went to school with Jongin and Sehun,” Chanyeol said. “Jongin and Soo have known each other their whole lives. And all their comments about being useless are lies.”

“Chanyeol and I at least have an excuse to be useless,” Sehun said. “Him being raised up with the goal of being somebody’s charming helpmeet, despite that dubious face, and me being a viscount.”

“Viscount, eh?” Baekhyun said. “Good to know. I’m a duke, so I  get to  boss you around.”

“You can try.”

That was such a very interesting line of discussion that Minseok was unable to resist making it worse. Everyone’s ears were so incredibly red, and it was still so early in the day.

“I don’t find Chanyeol’s face dubious, do you, Jongdae?”

Didn’t that make an amusing silence around the table. Baekhyun and Joonmyun smirked at one another.

It was an easy little trap, knowing Dae as he did, both his proclivities and his  manners.

“Not a bit,”  Jongdae  croaked.

As easy little trap with a  useful outcome, watching Jongdae watch how Chanyeol ducked his head and plucked at the other items in the box,  trying and failing not to smile.

Yes. Perhaps this whole thing would sort itself out more swiftly than anticipated. With this much ease, this few observers, and all these lovely, body-baring Tirian clothes.

“But tell us more about the work you did, surely you can’t have been allowed anything too strenuous?” he asked .

Because a change of topic was needed, and of course Jongdae would be curious about the details of how things were done, construction and design, just as he was about airships. Baek, Joon, and Yixing were simply interested in people, and would ask questions and try to tease out smiles all day long.

Minseok was only mildly interested in the minutiae of bedrock foundations and the renewing of old wooden floors. He let himself get caught up in the conversation when it turned to the stocking of the small library. But mostly he sat back, one hand on the small of Jongdae’s back, and watched the bonds that were starting to form among them all, to see how they might be turned to good use.

Therefore, Minseok declined to join the party going outside to mutter about the workings of windmills. When they returned, he had availed himself of the greater comfort of some of Chanyeol’s gifts and a novel he hadn’t read from the sitting-room library and had discovered that the local custom of sprawling across a pile of cushions made for a very pleasant reading experience indeed. Especially bare-armed under the ocean breeze fluttering through a window.

He rolled over and stretched for maximum effect when he heard people coming and blessed his luck that it was his spouses and not anyone who might catch him out, like Joon or Baekhyun.

Jongdae stopped so abruptly that he stumbled backwards into Chanyeol, who wrapped an arm around his waist by instinct. They both turned the exact same shade of red.

Delightful.

♕♕♕

One thing about people you barely knew was that it was impossible to tell when they were flirting. Chanyeol had known Sehun since before their voices broke. He knew Sehun was flirting with – somebody. Baekhyun, maybe? Or Joonmyun? Chanyeol couldn’t fathom why, he knew they were all married to each other, but that blend of vain-sounding sarcasm was Sehun’s classic flirting technique.

To Chanyeol’s knowledge, said technique hadn’t ever actually worked. But it’s not as if he’d ever asked.

Minseok lay on the sitting-room cushions in a cobalt sleeveless tunic and nearly white pants, both of which were so light that Chanyeol wouldn’t have worn them outside his bedroom without the coat intended to cover them. Did Minseok intend to look like he was making an invitation, the way he rolled over and arched his back, stretching long to show off his (admirable) arms and the curve of his torso? Was it purposeful that he ended up with that shaft of light slanting across his face, one lock of black hair hanging over his bright grey eyes?

Given the smile on his face, it probably was. Chanyeol figured it was only for Jongdae’s benefit, though.

Who was, um. 

Currently in his arms. Pressed rather closer against his front than Chanyeol was used to people being. And standing on his right foot.

Jongdae was remarkably warm. Whatever he used in his hair smelled like pine trees. His waist was so small under Chanyeol’s hand. Chanyeol wanted to do just about anything other than let him go.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol said, and let him go.

Jongdae stumbled forward.

“How’s the windmill?” Minseok asked, sounding as if he was on the verge of a laugh.

“Very interesting,” Jongdae rasped.

“Jongdae had a couple of intriguing ideas about how we could get a little more heating power out of it.”

After that fascinating statement, Chanyeol had to assume no flirting was going to be directed at him. Possibly ever. He tried to come up with a witty follow-up, but luck wasn’t with him. 

“You look comfortable,” Jongdae said, himself sounding the opposite.

“Oh, marvelously,” Minseok said, rolling around a little more and  ensuring that Chanyeol wouldn’t need a hot bath any time in probably the rest of his life.

“I’m as convinced as my mother of Viridan by the superior nature of Tirian clothing in this heat. Thank you, Chanyeol,” he said.

Chanyeol found it within himself to say that it had been his pleasure to provide them, though with the blood racing around between his face, his ears, and points southward, his voice sounded as if it came from far away.

Jongdae cleared his throat and sat stiffly in one of the available chairs with his legs crossed. He looked so annoyed – perhaps Minseok wasn’t flirting? 

Perhaps a relaxed and comfortable Minseok naturally looked wholly inviting.

Oh dear.

For once, Chanyeol was grateful that his spectacles were tucked away in his room. Being able to see the details of what was going on with Minseok’s musculature surely would be even worse.

♕♕♕

Jongdae wondered which was less likely to be scowled into submission: Minseok or his erection.

He didn’t figure that his chances were at all good for either option.

He was used to Minseok using his beauty as a weapon. Jongdae had usually found that Min doing so resulted in the most entertaining sorts of adventures, many of which involved compromising one’s trousers, occasionally under circumstances when they might be discovered or involving a non-standard use for a silk sash. He wasn’t even surprised to see Min attempting to rile him up in front of everyone (Chanyeol). He’d seen it coming in the looks and occasional flirtatious comments of the past day.

Having Chanyeol pressed against him was – well. Chanyeol’s hands were very large, weren’t they? The arm wrapped around him had held him tight against a chest that felt as firm as it had looked in the early morning light. Chanyeol’s breath had been warm against the back of his head.

And apparently his trouser conundrum was not going to be solved until his cock was done arguing with itself whether it was more intrigued by the idea of being covered so completely by that much warm body or by the idea of bending Chanyeol over and showing him that size was of little import when it came to pleasure and control.

It was so uncomfortable: his own unwelcome confusion; Minseok still smiling like a cat, looking down at the book in his hand as if he had no idea about the tension pinging around the room; and Chanyeol, squinting at the floor with his face blotchy and red.

Silence dragged on for an agonizing interval, which at least let Jongdae’s cock return to  an acceptable state so he could put his leg down.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said.  “ Would you li ke to go on a short outing?  There aren’t a lot of exciting things to see around here, and I didn’t want to make a lot of plans in case you’d both prefer to  just rest, but  if you like. It’s  not far , just up the beach .”

Minseok rolled onto his stomach and grinned. Jongdae  had little interest in walking around in the hot sun, but he had no confidence in his ability to refuse that smile.

“Shall we see what Chanyeol wants to show us, love?” he said, voice low and amused.

Jongdae nodded. He might as well.

“I’ll go ask the others, if you like? And you might wish to – to wear something you don’t mind getting wet,” Chanyeol said.

He darted out of the room. Again. His tendency to disappear was so annoying.

Minseok was still smiling up from his position on the cushions, chin resting on one fist. 

“What are you doing?” Jongdae growled.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, beloved,” Min said.

“You’re a menace.”

“And you would be more comfortable wearing something less complicated if we’re to be on the beach, surely? These clothes are wonderfully cool, Dae.”

Comfortable. Who, exactly, was supposed to feel comfortable with all this?

Minseok rolled up off the cushions and set his book aside. He padded over and  sat on Jongdae’s knees, laid one hand on Jongdae’s neck.

“Play along,” he said.  “Won’t you, love?  Let’s go see this thing that Chanyeol wants to show us.  Hm?”

He could play long, to make Min happy. 

Jongdae found himself moving through the house with all the day’s stories replaying through his head. The warm gold of the floors was no longer mere background: it was Jongin laughing about how they had all wrecked their backs on their hands and knees for weeks at a time, scraping years of neglect off the old boards; it was Chanyeol’s enthusiasm for the precise process of notching replacement boards to fit snugly in place. Jongdae had to stop to run his hand over the finial at the bottom of the stair banister, a fish curving in on itself, slightly lopsided but a charming detail for all that.

The fourth stair creaked a little, and now Jongdae knew that meant it was one that hadn’t needed to be replaced, the tread dating back at least to their great-grandparents’ time. The hinges on his bedroom door were bright brass, and, looking at them, he realized that he had no idea how hinges were put together. He was curious about it,  in the same way he was curious about airships.

Jongdae stood in front of the clothes press, looking at the things Chanyeol had left for him. Was it so different, really, from how careful he had been back in Viridan, making Chanyeol’s rooms comfortable? That had been a responsibility that mutated into a pleasure, trying to think of just the right colors to use, imagining Chanyeol’s pleasure in those rooms. 

And the comfort of knowing that those rooms were separated from his and Min’s own, no threat. Jongdae had felt magnanimous in the  face of that remove. Whereas here, it felt – otherwise.  They were practically strangers to one another, Jongdae had no wish to live in such close quarters, three days married, but still. He wanted to know whether Chanyeol  was upset by the separation, even as he had  made this room both lovely and comfortable.

He also absolutely did not want to know.

Nonetheless, Jongdae could pull on a pair of those easy linen trousers – which were nicely cool indeed – and one of his own shirts , long enough to hang down over his  thighs . He could collect his dark spectacles and follow Kyungsoo’s advice to leave his shoes behind . He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone outside barefoot.

Minseok was standing in the hallway  wearing  a Tirian coat over his  outfit and a broad grin.

“You look happy.”

“I feel as if I’m in fancy dress.”

A crowd awaited them in the sitting room:  Yixing and  Joonmyun in Tirian clothes, Baekhyun dressed similarly to Jongdae, and Sehun. Chanyeol, with his hands full,  blinking at them in surprise.

“Am I wearing this correctly?” Minseok asked, turning in a circle .

Showing off.

“Of course,” Chanyeol said. “There’s no wrong way, really. ”

He handed out a pair of broad-brimmed hats.

“I wish I’d thought to have some of these for you before our ride yesterday.”

Jongdae had to smile, wishing the same while he put the hat on .

“Oh, isn’t that flattering?” Chanyeol murmured. “Of course it is, what wouldn’t be?”

He jammed his own hat on his head and turned away.

“Shall we?”

They walked down to the beach and turned south, walking along the shore. The sand was hot; Yixing quickly followed Sehun’s example of walking at the waterline, until he, Sehun, and Baekhyun were laughing, dodging the edges of the waves. Jongdae walked next to Min but hesitated to take his hand, with Chanyeol just behind them. Between the hat, the dark spectacles, and being barely dressed, the sun hardly bothered Jongdae at all.

“Why is there so much less beach than there was last night?” Minseok asked.

“ We’re just a couple of hours past high tide,” Chanyeol said. 

Of course he had read about tides, but it was another thing entirely to see them.

“It changes so much?” Jongdae asked.

“Oh yes.  High tide during a storm, there’s pretty much no beach at all,” Chanyeol said. 

“Sometimes he sits all day and just watches the tide come in and out, it’s spooky,” Sehun called out over his shoulder.

“It’s not spooky to have actual thoughts that last longer than the time it takes to  blink,” Chanyeol said, and Sehun scrunched up his face.

Baekhyun laughed, and the ease of that familiar sound  allowed Jongdae to give himself up to his questioning mood.

“Why is the color of the water so  different here than at the palace? And the waves so much smaller?”

He really was coming to like Chanyeol’s easy grin. How vexing – as was that sly smile of Min’s under the brim of his hat.

“It’s much more shallow here,” Chanyeol said. “I don’t know whether you noticed on our ride, the spar of rock that juts out into the water just north of here? I had a long lecture from the architect about it that I wouldn’t do justice, something about the geology of the area, which is why there’s rock under the house. And you’ll see where we’re going, too. It’s a lovely color, that green, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The shore curved inland and, as Chanyeol had said, rocks sloped up out of the sand. They climbed over one eroded, low outcropping and looked down into a broad bowl filled with perfectly clear water, a scattering of sand at the bottom.

“This time of year, by the end of the day, this gets as warm as a bath,” Chanyeol said.

“Oh, lovely,” Yixing said, and waded in,  laughing aloud  as the water swirled around his knees .

Chanyeol dropped his coat to the ground ; Jongdae averted his eyes from the  revelation of freckles on Chanyeol’s bicep s.  Minseok dropped his coat to the ground; Jongdae averted his eyes from Minseok’s  slow smile.

“ Are you at all interested in sea creatures?” Chanyeol asked. “I love tide pools, it’s amazing what you can see, come look.”

They were borne on the wave of Chanyeol’s enthusiasm,  to a small area  at  the side of the larger pool  that was full of wriggly, brightly colored  things, some of which hardly looked like animals at all.

“It’s a sea star,” Chanyeol said, turning the thing over in his huge hands under the water to show the infinite wiggling little digits underneath.

“How long until you paint these, love?” Minseok asked in a low tone when Chanyeol turned away briefly.

That crystal clear pool, dark rock, and strange animals in bright colors – Jongdae already wished for his sketchbook. It struck him all at once, how much there was around him that was strange and interesting, all the colors he wanted to put to canvas on that beautiful easel.

“I want to go into town,” he said, “to buy paint.”

Chanyeol smiled.  Jongdae took a deep breath and leaned into Minseok’s shoulder. Min pressed back .

“I’d be happy to take you to the shop tomorrow, if you like,” Chanyeol said.

This was their husband. They would know him their whole lives. And here he was, kneeling by a pool of water showing them wriggly sea creatures, smiling. Not intruding. Offering generosity.

“All right,” Jongdae said.

And the pool was as warm as a bath, but somehow still refreshing despite the sun.  All of them ended up sitting in the weirdly buoyant water, laughing and floating sideways , until the sun was low in the sky .

“We should go,” Sehun said finally. “For one thing, it’s a pain to find one’s way back from here in the dark, and for another, Soo will string us up by our ankles if he’s burned dinner.”

All of them  rose  from the pool in their damp, clinging linen . Baekhyun laughed and plucked at his clothing.  Jongdae felt his ears burn until both of his husbands were covered by those long, loose coats.


	14. Chapter 14

“ What a pleasant afternoon,” Minseok said .

They couldn’t have put much strain on the power sink, as cool as the water was falling on their heads in that lovely green-and-blue bathroom. Surely, if he wanted, Chanyeol  could be  boiling himself like a piece of seaweed in his own shower. Too much heat would be counterproductive to Minseok’s purposes.

“Nnguh,” Jongdae said .

“Hands clasped, love . Eyes closed.”

It made for a rather uncomfortable contortion, stroking  Jongdae’s cock too slowly for anything but t easing with one hand while opening himself up with the other, standing in a shower stall. Not to mention trying to be both quick and quiet about it. 

This furtive business would be of short duration,  even if it required tying  both his husbands down and riding them into some semblance of sense.

“Min?”

Minseok  brought his mind back from his reverie and set his hand back in motion.

It was an admirable idea, regardless. And their bed in Isatis  was  perfect for it. In the meantime, there was  the matter in his hand.

Jongdae’s smile, when he was allowed to open his eyes, was sharp , and he  bit into  Minseok’s back with  a groan while his hips moved.  Minseok worked himself . It was tricky, trying to ride the buildup of pleasure but remain clear-headed enough to listen for the telltale hitch in Jongdae’s breath, the way his fingers dug in as his peak approached.

Minseok braced his knees and squeezed so that  Jongdae cried out against his shoulder blade. He arched and pitched his voice to a growl.

“Did yo u  notice how those wet clothes clung to Chanyeol’s body?”

Jongdae shuddered into him, sobbed when Minseok clenched tight with his own release. Minseok turned to kiss around Jongdae’s attempt at a glare and made sure to lean against him while they cleaned themselves. 

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Jongdae grumbled while Minseok dried his hair.

“ What, make you come in my ass?  I should hope so,  it’s not as if that’s particularly subtle.”

Poor thing, he did try to maintain his pout when they went downstairs to dinner : out doors  again, though just outside the house, the table  occupied by covered dishes and laughing men. When Chanyeol turned to greet them with a smile, Minseok caught Jongdae’s blush.

The general mood was too light for Jongdae to frown for long. They sat at the table late, by the light of oil lamps, making a sizeable dent in Chanyeol’s store of wine from the cold room, late into the night. Minseok sacrificed his own pleasant haze in favor of making sure that Jongdae got too loose to fret about his upcoming trek into town.

And then, in the morning, when he found Jongdae standing at the window just after dawn again, Minseok crept up behind him to bite at the back of his neck and untie the drawstring of Jongdae’s sleep pants, then dropped to his knees and took his time making sure Jongdae would remain too loose to fret.

“Come with me,” Jongdae murmured, mouth up against his neck afterward and hands pulling at his clothes. “Min.  Come with me.”

Minseok kissed him until  Jongdae’s jaw went  slack – a sure sign that if he kept going, another round would be necessary soon.

“No, beloved,” he murmured. “Go  ride around in the hot sun and  purchase your paints .  I have that novel  waiting for me .”

Which he did, surely – and he spent some time with it, lying on those cushions in the sitting room after they left, with Yixing muttering over his guitar in a corner .  After he consulted with Kyungsoo about the probable length of time it would take for Chanyeol and Jongdae to  get to the art shop and back, and what detours Chanyeol was likely to suggest along the way.

♕♕♕

Was being newly married always such a welter of confusion? Chanyeol had no one to ask . He would rather cut his own tongue out than ask his parents, who se teasing, however well-intentioned , would be too much to bear. Writing to his aunt and uncle would take weeks for an answer to arrive. And the only other married people he knew in his vicinity were Minseok and Jongdae’s staff , so that was impossible.

It was a lot of  uncertainty for three days in .

Case in point: taking them to the tidepool sounded like such a good idea.  The tidepool was  beautiful to look at and pleasant to sit in. They had both had questions about the sea, and Jongdae had  been so taken by the little creatures Chanyeol pulled out of the water for them to examine and touch. He was genuinely pleased to offer up a day to escort Jongdae into town for paints.

And then they had stood up out of the water, and the only thing that had kept Chanyeol from staring at the contours of their bodies was to clench his fists hard enough to leave marks. He’d flung his coat on in desperation, in case anything embarrassing decided to happen below the waist.

He thought for sure he’d be the last one downstairs for dinner, given how long he stood with his face mashed up against the tile wall in his shower, right hand  tugging at his own hair while his left hand tugged at his cock, until his knees buckled with the force of his orgasm and the memory of his spouses behind his closed eyes.

But they had been even later coming down , Jongdae frowning under pink cheeks , and Chanyeol drank more than he generally liked, just to drown out the thought that if the three of them were possibly all doing the same thing at the same time , wouldn’t it be more efficient just to do it together?

Impossible thoughts were so troublesome.

Perhaps this was the newness. He wouldn’t give up hope that  someday there would be enough affection among them that he would be allowed to sometimes touch them, maybe even more (gods of the uttermost deeps, he hoped for more). But until that day came, maybe this first flush of being knocked sideways by attraction would recede and they could simply work toward getting to know one another sensibly.

In the meantime, he rose as early as he had the day before , to swim until his shoulders and arms burned, so he’d be too tired to  drool over his spouses like some sort of maniac.

He wasn’t surprised that Jongdae tried to convince Baekhyun to join them on the ride to town . He was slightly surprised that Baekhyun refused, and that Minseok was still wearing his sleepwear , one lock of hair sticking up in the back, his elbow holding down a novel while he ate breakfast . Looking even better than he did usually.

From one angle, it was more than  Chanyeol had hoped, that any them would feel so immediately comfortable and behave as if  they were at home. 

From another angle,  he was moderately terrified to spend most of the day alone with Jongdae.

It was an unreasonable terror, Chanyeol told himself sternly while he saddled Angel and Jongin spun around in helpless circles while Jongdae saddled Morningstar. Jongdae was prickly, but his manners were excellent. He had more than once shown Chanyeol a kindness above the bare minimum. And he prepared his horse with practiced, gentle hands that kept even that restive gelding calm. He even turned down Jongin’s offer of a hand up and leapt into the saddle on his own.

Chanyeol made a mental note not to dwell on what that suggested regarding Jongdae’s leg strength.

Then he made another mental note not to be bitter about how  good Jongdae looked in Kyungsoo’s broad-brimmed hat.

Probably the two of them had sailed through their adolescent years without a single voice break or spot. Probably neither of them had broken numerous antique artifacts simply because they didn’t know where their own edges were. Probably they had been handsome and compelling every moment of their lives and been talented at everything they’d ever tried and felt extremely tired to be saddled with a spouse who resembled a mangrove tree and spent an entire day blathering about repairing old houses.

“Chanyeol,” Jongdae called out, “ is there a reason to canter all the way into town? Do we need to return so early?”

Chanyeol cursed himself and pulled up until they were even on the path. Angel blew her derision.

“I apologize. I got caught up in my thoughts,  you won’t learn the way if we go so fast,” he said.

Jongdae’s mouth under his dark spectacles was wry.

“Is there more than the one path?”

“I – no,” Chanyeol said , feeling that he had perhaps  reached the actual maximum depth of foolishness.

“Then please don’t trouble yourself. I merely thought it would be hot for the horses.”

They rode  side by side at a walk for a while, until  the  seaside became scattered houses, became  a quiet street, became city. With their hats and lack of guard, they were merely two men on horseback; Chanyeol neither expected nor received any  attention beyond basic politeness.

Soon, the streets were too crowded for conversation, and Morningstar was a little shy of motorcars besides, so they rode without speaking through the winding neighborhoods to the  slightly quieter mercantile district and the livery stable closest to the art shop.

“Highness!” the  hostler said.

Chanyeol kept his cringe on the inside in favor of a smile and a bow while the woman babbled about  the wedding. He felt Jongdae’s touch on his wrist and nearly fell down with  relief.

“Thank you,” he said, interrupting her flow of well-wishes. “Please let me introduce my husband, Jongdae of Viridan.”

After that, at least, the fountain of  enthusiasm had two targets. The woman beamed at them ,  made several pointed remarks about honeymoons, and promised to care for their horses as if they were her own children before Chanyeol and Jongdae were able to separate themselves.

“Oof,” Chanyeol said when they made it onto the wooden sidewalk.

Jongdae laughed. Chanyeol briefly considered lying down in the street, owing to a sudden lack of skeleton.

“Do you get recognized a lot?”

“Not really,” Chanyeol said.  “I suppose it’s just because our ferrotypes have been in the papers lately. I hope it didn’t bother you.”

“Not at all, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol tried not to focus on how much he liked the sound of his name in that deep, ringing voice. 

Thankfully, the walk to the art shop wasn’t long, and then it was merely a matter of standing back to let Jongdae wander. The instant they were inside, tension dropped out of Jongdae’s posture, and he  browsed  the shop with his chin lifted, the natural smile his lips made curling outward. Chanyeol knew nothing of paints or varnishes beyond what he had paid for during the refurbishment of the house.  Chanyeol watched Jongdae drag his fingers across tablets of paper, pick up small tubes and tins and turn them over.  His expression  was quiet and pleased. 

Even accounting for  frustration,  Chanyeol  considered  himself lucky to have such faces to look at for the rest of his life.  He was happy  for  his hands  to  be pulled into service as Jongdae’s choices piled up.  Happy to listen to Jongdae’s easy banter with the shopkeeper.

“Did you find what you wanted?” he asked as they stepped back outside.

“Oh yes, it’s a lovely shop,” Jongdae said.  “Thank you.”

Jongdae paused on the sidewalk, turned in the direction of the livery stable but  seemingly hesitant to move.

Chanyeol wondered whether Jongdae was shy. The thought was rather stunning, for someone so handsome.

“ We could wander for a bit, if you like,” he said. 

“All right.”

Jongdae set a slow pace for them, craning his neck around constantly to stare at the shops, the people, the sky . Chanyeol tried not to stare at Jongdae, the sharp angles of his jaw and the way a smile would occasionally flit across his face. Chanyeol knew they were being stared at as well and kept his head ducked, hat low to hide his hair. But  between  Jongdae’s  streamlined clothing and their size difference, Chanyeol wasn’t surprised  by the attention.

He was surprised when Jongdae stopped in front of a sweet shop with a grin .

“Min loves sweets,” he said.

So that was a new thing as well, that Jongdae would let him know something about Minseok, stroll with him through the sweet shop musing aloud about which sweets to purchase for whom. It was so easy and pleasant that Chanyeol couldn’t help grinning when they later reached the edge of the city and the quiet path back home. He looked over at Jongdae, and his heart fluttered to see an answering smile, which broadened into a wicked grin.

Jongdae dug in his heels, and Morningstar shot down the path. Chanyeol urged Angel faster and followed them, laughing.

♕♕♕

Not one flicker of unwelcome attention, all day. Jongdae had been braced for intrusive questions, or at worst some awkward flirting, but Chanyeol had been – not relaxed, exactly. Jongdae wondered whether either of them had ever seen the other relaxed, except in brief snatches. But he hadn’t fretted or hovered. He hadn’t frowned at the amount of time spent in the art supply shop; in fact, every time Jongdae looked around, Chanyeol had worn that quiet smile and reached out to free Jongdae’s hands of small items.

Jongdae didn’t race for long. It was too hot, and he didn’t know the path well enough to gallop Morningstar safely down it. But his feeling of lightness remained when he pulled up, as he unbuttoned his jacket and grinned over at Chanyeol. Angel pranced a little, as if she wanted to run more, and Morningstar snorted his disapproval at her, which made Chanyeol laugh.

Jongdae thought about all the ways he had imagined it could go wrong, among three. 

He thought about the living example in front of him every day he was in Viridan, of what that was like when it went right.

At some point he was going to have to muster sufficient courage to speak to Baekhyun.

They rode side by side for a while. Jongdae stopped at the spar of rock where the water changed color, just to stare at the gradations of grey-brown to green.

“Is it all right?” Chanyeol asked after a couple of minutes. “Your studio, I mean.”

Perhaps it was simply easier to speak to him with his hat and dark glasses, without that worried squint he always seemed to have indoors.

“Oh yes,” Jongdae said. “More than. I’ll have to learn the light, but I couldn’t ask for better. And that easel is just beautiful.”

Why that made Chanyeol’s smile so bright, he didn’t know. But he was glad to see it anyway. Several minutes further down the path, Chanyeol asked what he meant by “learn the light,” and Jongdae found words spilling out of his mouth, about light and color, how he would adjust his palette based on the light in the room so that the paintings coming out of it would reflect his vision even in different surroundings.

It was pleasant, to speak simply to Chanyeol and answer his questions. As they rode slowly down toward the house, Jongdae found himself glad to see it, happy at the prospect of greeting everyone there, taking off his jacket, and unpacking his purchases in that bright room. It wasn’t home, but he could see how it might become so over time.

Well. As it would need to, if he’d spend a third of the year here for the rest of his life.

He heard a half-familiar thudding sound as they approached the stable that Jongdae’s brain identified just quickly enough to give him time to sit down in the saddle and stifle a groan. Chanyeol, in his curiosity, rode right up to the corner of the stable, so Jongdae got to watch how he went red, then pale, then red again, and dropped his reins at the sight of Minseok at the training bag.

Angel, feeling herself free of control, wandered in a small circle and tossed her head.

Jongdae, having been the target of many such displays in the past 3 years, usually under  constraining circumstances, figured Chanyeol was probably thanking all his gods that his ridiculous horse gave him  the opportunity to collect himself.

Jongdae slid to the g round just as Minseok pretended to notice their arrival and turned with wide eyes, dabbing at his sweaty face and shaking his hair. If he’d tied the drawstring of his  trousers any looser, the thatch of hair between his legs would show. 

Some distant part of Jongdae’s mind was half-heartedly furious that Min would put himself on _display_ like this, out of doors, in front of relative strangers. That part of his mind had been worn down by repetition, though. And time spent in Isatis.

Mostly, Jongdae was curious what Chanyeol would do, besides fall sideways off his horse and pretend to fiddle with the saddle like that. 

In other circumstances, Jongdae would be more tempted to knock Min down and lick some of that sweat off him, but he and Chanyeol just had a calm and pleasant outing. It seemed rude to potentially cause Chanyeol to lose consciousness in his own stableyard.

“Was it a profitable trip?” Minseok asked while he unwrapped his hands at approximately half his usual speed.

The better, of course, so show off his arms. And stand there sweating in the sun mostly naked, looking like an alabaster statue of some ancient god.

It really was unfair,  that  anyone should look so beautiful after so much exercise. He didn’t even have the decency to be red-faced, aside from slightly pink cheeks that only put Jongdae to mind of how he looked after a round in bed. His hair fell into his eyes, which somehow enhanced the point of his chin and drew attention to that mouth that surely had the most kissable bottom lip of anyone currently alive.

Not that Jongdae was biased, of course. That was his objective opinion as an artist.

“It was,” Jongdae said. “And enjoyable besides. We even thought of you, though I hesitate to distribute gifts to anyone so sweaty.”

Dammit, he was playing entirely into Minseok’s hands, if that smile was any indication.

“Chanyeol,” Minseok called out, “surely you wouldn’t be so cruel as to keep me in suspense?”

Poor Chanyeol was still staring at his pommel.

“I believe I very clearly said I would never do anything to come between you, so I’ll stay out of this conversation,” he croaked after a pause.

Jongdae couldn’t help but laugh. It was a response almost worthy of Joonmyun, and for a moment, Jongdae felt something like fondness for their new spouse, even as  Chanyeol  shook his head and carried his saddlebags into the house.

“That was nicely done and well deserved,”  Jongdae said to Min as he pulled his own bags off Morningstar’s ba ck .

“Indeed,” Min said with a grin. “ Though  of course there’s no telling which of us might be the first to  come in the middle. ”

Jongdae, having never asked for the mental image of the three of them falling apart under one another’s hands, found his easy mood rather snuffed out before he turned on his heel and went inside.

“For that, you can tie up the horses,” he said over his shoulder .

Chanyeol was unpacking his bags onto the kitchen table with annoyed-seeming thumps when Jongdae reached him. Here was another moment of solidarity between them.

“Well said, out there,” he said as he took the roll of canvas and small box of paint tubes out of Chanyeol’s hands.

Chanyeol rubbed at his nose. Back to squinting, back to that awkwardness. What a pity.

“Thanks,” he said, with a sigh.

Jongdae hadn’t planned to actually set up his studio yet, but the prospect of punishing Min by disappearing for the afternoon held a sudden appeal. Of course, 10 minutes into the process, he was so happily engrossed in sorting his purchases and deciding on the best placement for them that the whole ridiculous moment fell out of his mind.


	15. Chapter 15

Minseok was pleased to find  his beribboned box of sweets on the kitchen table , and enough satisfied by his own trouble-making to leave Chanyeol with simple thanks . The poor man had his face buried in Toben’s fur, he had probably had his limit of needling for the day.

Jongdae still hadn’t emerged by the time Minseok was clean enough for company, but Chanyeol had  calmed down sufficiently to actually speak (possibly helped by the fact that Minseok, smiling to himself, had made sure to  choose clothing that covered him fully). He found Chanyeol in the sitting room, draped over cushions next to Yixing  in front of  a sheaf of papers.

“Is the bag all right?”

“Of course it is, thank you,” Minseok said.

Chanyeol blushed when Minseok squeezed his shoulder. Yixing’s glance was wry. Minseok couldn’t fret over the fallout of his display – the afternoon was too quiet and lazy to admit worry. He lay on the cushions with his novel, listening to Chanyeol and Yixing sing softly back and forth at one another. Jongin stuck his head through the door, then returned soon after with a protesting Kyungsoo, whom he pushed to the floor next to the singers with,

“I can roast fish, Soo , you know you want to sing with them.”

After that, Minseok didn’t pretend to do anything other than listen . Eventually Baekhyun joined as well. He ran his hand through Yixing’s hair on his way past, which made Chanyeol miss a note, then  plunked himself down next to Minseok. He looked rather rumpled.

Joonmyun and Sehun, creeping in later still, looked even more rumpled. 

How interesting.

Eventually they were loud enough to  reel in even their wayward artist , though not so far as to inspire him to  sit on the floor , despite Baekhyun’s jeering at him.

“If you had a nice, slim figure like that, maybe you’d want to sit up where everyone could see you too,” Sehun said.

There was a long pause of pure horror , before Yixing and Joonmyun howled with laughter and Baekhyun with outrage. Minseok wasn’t sure which of his husbands looked more appalled. Baekhyun took care of Jongdae immediately, appealing to him for compliments  until Jongdae laugh ed with the rest of them. Minseok watched Kyungsoo rub Chanyeol’s shoulder until Chanyeol was able to smile at their antics.

Pleasant – and intriguing to see how things were moving, and so quickly. That evening, he lay up on one elbow, stroking Jongdae’s cheek with the _shush_ of waves soft through the window.

“Made yourself at home in your studio, beloved?”

Jongdae turned his head and kissed Minseok’s wrist.

“Not quite at home, yet,” he said. “But a start.”

Minseok kissed him , slow and soft , until he sighed.

“I like this place,” he murmured into Jongdae’s mouth.

Jongdae  stiffened slightly; Minseok kissed him again, hand soft around the side of his neck.

“I like how quiet it is, how left alone we are with only those we choose to have around us.”

He kissed Jongdae again, then lifted his head to look down into  those shadowed eyes. Rubbed his thumb against the edge of Jongdae’s frown.

“Yes,” Jongdae said eventually.

Minseok kissed him again, to reward his bravery. For not even a week in, he was doing infinitely better than Minseok could’ve guessed. Spending most of a day with Chanyeol and arriving home smiling. 

“So who was the target of this afternoon’s display, me or Chanyeol?” Jongdae asked when Minseok’s mouth had trailed low enough to enable him to speak.

Minseok grinned against the skin of Jongdae’s neck , gave it a brief suck.

“If I had any idea what you’re talking about, I suppose my answer would be both,” he said.

Jongdae growled and rolled. Minseok was not displeased to find himself on his back.

“That’s hardly fair,” Jongdae said.

Minseok wriggled and inspired the  sharp inhale he intended.

“I’m Isatian,” he said. “We don’t do fair, except in matters of state, and you know I have nothing to do with those  other than the acquisition of spouses. ”

“You’re maddening,” Jongdae said.

“Am I?”

Jongdae tugged at his hair .

“Everyone’s just lucky I didn’t knock you down and lick the sweat off you in front of them,” he said.

“I see no obstacle to your doing so now,” Minseok said. 

He was impatient with this business of quiet fumblings in the bed, but smothering their own noise with a cock stuffed in each mouth was at least an enjoyable way to keep the volume low.

By the next day, Minseok wondered whether the heat and quiet of the place had seeped into everyone’s bones.  No one seemed inclined to do much of anything. Jongdae was up at the window at dawn, as he had been for the past several days, but he was easily coaxed back into bed to doze for another couple of hours.  Minseok  later  found himself having the novel experience of standing by the larder , putting together platters of leftover food for breakfast.

“Eventually you’ll be able to tell who ’s on breakfast duty just by the way it looks,” Jongin said. “Soo always makes it beautiful , and Sehun won’t let any different foods touch each other .  Chanyeol tries to make things look  like little sculptures, until we’re all ready to starve to death waiting for him, so don’t ever let him help.  I just pile everything on as fast I can to get to the eating.”

“I believe I’m on your side,” Minseok said, to Jongin’s high laugh.

Baekhyun had another  printing of gossip papers and read them out to everyone  over breakfast, to varying degrees of entertainment.  Minseok had to wonder where he got the damned things. Jongdae looked rather wistful over the report of his family’s departure for Viridan the day before.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said sadly. “I wish I’d remembered. We were in town, we could’ve gone to see them off.”

Minseok carefully looked at neither of them. What a path they were all taking that had such turning points in it, every moment.

“I forgot too,  it’s all right,” Jongdae said.

Minseok tried to keep his relief  silent.

He could see, though, that Jongdae would have one of his  indrawn days. Dae left them after breakfast, taking some time in his studio, then emerging mid-morning to go sit on the ground next to the path to the beach, sketchbook on his lap. 

The sketchbook was an indication that Minseok should occupy himself as he wished.  He visited the horses, spent some time soaking in the bath, talked to Baek and Joonmyun about nothing much.  Read  his novel. 

“Is he all right?” Chanyeol asked mid-afternoon, staring out the window at Jongdae’s back.

“He is,” Minseok said. “He’s watching the light, and the way the color changes in the sea.”

Chanyeol nodded.  It occurred to Minseok that to  keep this small house stocked with food and wine, clean and comfortable with only two servants who were barely visible, must’ve  required considerable effort. 

“Is he – unhappy?” Chany eol asked.

What a conundrum their new spouse was: by turns charming and awkward, handsome despite his squint,  and so obviously eager to cater to them. At eas e in this house, if not yet at eas e with the people inhabiting it.

Minseok felt a rush of fondness, and a certainty that eventually, all of this would work out in the happiest possible fashion. How lucky they were – not only saddled with each other, but also with this sweet man whom they would surely fold in with them. Minseok took Chanyeol’s hand and ignored Chanyeol’s low  gasp.

“No,” he said. “He’s not. Jongdae’s wary of new things, but you can’t know how much of what you’ve done to make us feel comfortable has catered to that wariness and lessened it. Please be patient, Chanyeol, this is still so new.”

Chanyeol nodded at their clasped hands.

“Are you? Unhappy?”

Minseok squeezed his hand.

“I am not,” he said. “Are you?”

Lips pressed together, Chanyeol shook his head. His grasp on Minseok’s hand was tight enough to be slightly uncomfortable, but Minseok didn’t try to pull away. 

♕♕♕

Chanyeol hardly meant to have an emotional breakdown staring out the front window at a figure he could barely make out across the yard, but Minseok was as he had always been so far (aside from those moments when he seemed determined to burn one’s brain out from the inside) – patient and kind, letting Chanyeol cling to his hand like a limpet. 

Could be believe Minseok that neither of them was unhappy? 

He wanted to. He chose to. He had to.

And it was, as Minseok had said, all still so new.

“Come sit with me for a moment, and let me tell you some things,” Minseok said. 

Chanyeol was unjustifiably proud of the way most of them had taken to lounging on cushions instead of sitting in the chairs he’d bought. And if Minseok didn’t quite curl up on him, like Yoora or Sehun or Jongin would, at least they were still close to one another. Even better, Minseok reached out to clasp his hand again. 

“When Jongdae and I married, he  barely spoke six words to me before the ceremony and not at all for the first week after.”

Chanyeol laughed at the ludicrousness of such an idea, that two princes in close quarters could even get away with not speaking  to one another  at all. But Minseok gazed at him, not entirely serious but not obviously teasing, either.

“Really?”

Minseok nodded.

“It was more awkward than I even knew two people could be together.  We spent the night of our wedding curled around the opposite edges of the bed to such a degree that it’s a wonder neither of us fell out.”

As wretched as Chanyeol had felt the night of their wedding,  scant  5 days ago, that story was worse.

Minseok told him of their first weeks  together, how frustrated he had been.  How awkward he had felt, and how prickly Jongdae had been.

Chanyeol turned this over in his mind, a day since he and Jongdae had laughed together, sitting next to Minseok with their hands entangled .

He would rather have burrowed his head up under Minseok’s chin, to feel Minseok’s arms around him, like he did when he was sad and Yoora or Sehun would let him pretend to be small. But they were still such strangers to one another. And even if Minseok had worn some of the clothes he’d left, even if they both looked less tight around the eyes, the house hadn’t had time to work its magic yet. Joonmyun and Yixing had been here a few days longer, and he could see it in them already, in the way that they no longer flitted around at top speed. They had more than two weeks here still, to meet one another calmly and without obligation.

“Be patient with him, Chanyeol,” Minseok said.

Really, was there anything he wouldn’t do if Minseok asked?  A t the moment, feeling the warmth of Minseok’s palm against his own, Chanyeol didn’t think so.

“ And with you,” he said.

“ Oh, you don’t need to be patient with me. ”

Chanyeol had to actively fight his urge to lean over and squeeze Minseok for that – but not because he was sad. There was something there, growing among them. Chanyeol didn’t know what it would be, and it was such early days. But already that bleak picture Cousin Eunji had tried to paint seemed unlikely. Chanyeol set aside a low, buzzing worry that he’d carried since their first meeting and smiled.

Minseok  smiled back at him and squeezed his hand. Jongdae clattered through the front door, hair mussed and nose pink, looking distracted.

“ Make any useful sketches, love?” MInseok asked.

Chanyeol tried to draw his hand away and found it trapped. Most of his circulation redirected itself to his ears.

“Mmm,” Jongdae hummed. “I need to  mix some blues, I have no idea how to get that color right.”

His shirt cuffs were  smudged with grey. Chanyeol had a fond thought of straightening his hair for him, dabbing those pencil marks away, and  sitting Jongdae down in front of a cup of tea.

Jongdae wandered off in the  direction of his studio with a wave, barely looking at them. Minseok laughed lightly.

“Isn’t he adorable?”

Chanyeol kept his agreement internal, in case it was inappropriate. He escaped to his own workshop not long after, letting the regular motion of the plane help his sense of calm solidify. Minseok hadn’t been under any obligation to sit close and hold his hand. They could just as easily have had that conversation across the kitchen table. But he had reached out, twice. Chanyeol figured he must be doing something right, at least.

Jongdae was quiet at dinner, but Chanyeol  couldn’t let it worry him, given the way that Jongdae insisted on sitting where he could see the water and kept squinting out  past them, refusing to put on his dark spectacles. When it seemed that he’d spend the next day similarly sitting hunched over staring at the sea, Chanyeol ran out with  a hat in his hand.

“You’ll burn your nose and neck to a crisp otherwise,” he said.

“Oh, all right.”

Jongdae paid so little attention that he put the hat on at quite an alarming angle, but at least his skin was covered. And he showed up to dinner with a blue-green streak across one cheek. The rest of them had spent the afternoon in the shade like sensible people, trading around Viridanian, Isatian, and Tirian card games, gambling with pistachios. The fondness with which Minseok and the Viridanians took over their distracted prince to coddle him through the meal made Chanyeol want to test whether he could hug all five of them at once.

“Jongin and I are off to town tomorrow for supplies,” Kyungsoo said wh en they had decamped to the grassy bit in front of the house with wine bottles and  a beautiful little cake.

“If you don’t mind a detour to show me the boxing gym, I’ll go with you,” Minseok said.

He turned so that Chanyeol felt pinned under his gaze. Jongdae sat up straight  and focused  for the first time that day, and Chanyeol had greater sympathy for the bugs he had attached to boards  for his tutor as a boy.

“Now Chanyeol , please don’t take this amiss.”

Dread made one feel so nice and cool in the heat of summertime.

“Would you mind terribly if I changed out Glacier for a different horse? She couldn’t be better behaved, but you must admit she has all the personality of a  stone.”

Chanyeol was so relieved that he laughed.

“I told you,” Jongin said.

“Of course it’s fine, I  know she’s the sort of horse you can ride while you nap.”

“Indeed,” Minseok said with a broad grin that showed his gums. “Though she’s so pretty, I know we looked very fine riding over. But I prefer a mount with a bit more spirit.”

Jongdae choked on his wine at the same time that Jongin and Kyungsoo laughed, and Chanyeol discovered that it was possible to be two distinct varieties of embarrassed  a t once. He suspected his Isatian spouse of a particularly nefarious sense of humor.

He rather liked it. And was terrified of it.

Then, in the morning: disaster.

♕♕♕

One thing about being caught up with thoughts of color and paint: Jongdae didn’t wake at dawn to brood down at  his  half-naked new spouse walking up from the beach. He slept secure in Min’s arms  instead, waking with a head muzzy still, full of  grey and greens, of the way his palette couldn’t quite yet capture that shade of the water at mid-day. Maybe it needed a touch  less  yellow?

He was still pondering it over breakfast,  nose buried in the color swatches painted into his sketchbook,  when Chanyeol skidded in and thunked onto the bench opposite .

“Sorry,” Chanyeol said, “I didn’t  want to miss breakfast with you, I was distracted, you’re not done yet, are you?”

“No, it’s fine,” Jongdae muttered.

“Chanyeol, what?” Minseok said.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said. “Oh no.”

Jongdae looked up at the distress in his tone. Chanyeol was sitting across from them with something pale yellow strewn into his hair, wearing large round spectacles that made his eyes look half again as large, and slightly ruddier than usual. He had a spray of freckles across his nose and upper cheeks.

A quite fetching spray of freckles across his nose and upper cheeks.

“Now what’s this?” Minseok asked.

Chanyeol groaned. Kyungsoo dropped a bowl of porridge onto the table in front of him.

“Yeollie is approximately as blind as a cave eel ,” he said.

Jongdae shook his head to free it of color swatches , with only marginal success.

“And how have you been coping then, the past week?” Minseok asked.

Chanyeol cringed.

“With headaches and tinted powder,” Kyungsoo said crisply.  “And I should think a number of stubbed toes.”

“But why?” Minseok said.

“Indeed,” Jongdae said.

Chanyeol’s blush was significantly deeper in tone and less uneven with a bare face.

“It was Yoora’s idea,” he said to his bowl finally.

“And how long were you supposed to keep up that pretense?” Minseok asked.

Chanyeol shrugged.

Jongdae attempted to parse this influx of information . It was certainly one variety of explanation for Chanyeol’s awkwardness. Minseok rose and went to the other side of the table to pick the  shreds out of Chanyeol’s hair. Poor Chanyeol looked so shocked that Jongdae couldn’t even envy him.

“Well, I must say I’m relieved to know your sister has at least a single flaw,” Min said. “I was beginning to worry that she was an example of perfection. Those are so tiresome to have in the family.”

Too bad Kyungsoo was standing out of Chanyeol’s line of sight – he might’ve been comforted by Kyungsoo’s grin.

“And what’s this in your hair?” Min asked.

Chanyeol mumbled something indistinct.

“It’s sawdust,” Kyungsoo said. “ I assume whatever reason he had for hiding that he has a woodshop in the back of the stable is as stupid as his reason for hiding that he’s speckled and near-sighted.”

“Soo,” Chanyeol groaned.

“Indeed,” Minseok said, handing the palmful of sawdust to Kyungsoo. “Why would anyone  be ashamed of that? I suppose I’ll have to take up some variety of artistic endeavor now, just to keep up with the two of you. ”

The idea that rolled around in the back of Jongdae’s mind burst out of his mouth.

“Did you make my easel?”

Chanyeol’s freckles were two or three shades lighter than his hair, and they  didn’t quite disappear behind his red-faced nod.

“And the fish finial at the bottom of the stairs,” Kyungsoo said.

“Oh, but that’s so charming,” Jongdae said.

Chanyeol blinked at him, eyes wide behind his spectacles.

“And the easel is beautiful.”

“I, um. Thank you,” Chanyeol mumbled to his bowl.

Out of the corner of his eye, the swatches in Jongdae’s notebook suddenly made sense:  _ not _ less yellow,  but a bit more grey, to soften it out.

“So you don’t have a squint?” he asked.

“Um. No?” Chanyeol said.

“Excellent,” Jongdae said, and wandered to his studio to test his theory.

Jongdae had no idea how long it had been by the time his color experiments and sketches had resolved themselves to the point that they set his brain free. He vaguely remembered  Minseok kissing his cheek  sometime in the recent past, and registered that he was hungry.

In the kitchen, halfway through a large piece of bread, the breakfast conversation reasserted itself.

Dread lords of the mountaintop.

He would’ve asked where Chanyeol might be, but he couldn't find anyone. He remembered that Jongin and Kyungsoo had gone with Min into town. But where was Baekhyun?

Jongdae wandered outside, which was as empty as the house. Inside the stable he could hear someone clunking around behind a closed door at one end. He patted Morningstar and Angel, then knocked on the door.

“Oh, hello,” Chanyeol said.

“Are we the only ones here?”

“I don’t think so. Can you not find anybody? Is there something you need?”

Chanyeol was already shaking sawdust out of his hair, looking around for a place to set down the tool in his hand. His face was so much more animated with his spectacles on, as if he perhaps wasn’t in a perpetual state of slight worry.

“No,” Jongdae said. “No, I actually came to find you.”

Chanyeol froze in place.

“Oh?”

“I recall being somewhat rude this morning.”

Chanyeol smiled, and Jongdae found himself returning the expression.

“Not at all, you were obviously distracted. And the eight winds know I’m familiar with what that’s like.”

This was a generous response from someone recently accused of having a squint.

“Will you show me your workshop?”

It seemed so easy to make Chanyeol smile. Jongdae discovered that he enjoyed the sensation. And it was pleasant to see how he had arranged his tools and supplies with the same care that Jongdae did his painting things. It put Jongdae in mind of some of the things he wanted to sketch, how he wanted to _work_ on all the things he had seen in this place.

“Will you walk with me to the tide pool?” he asked.

“Of course.”

Jongdae wondered, while he waited in the hall with his hat and his dark spectacles in his hands,  whether Chanyeol would want a workshop in Viridan .  He and Min  spent relatively few  whole  days together ,  all told : Jongdae painted and fenced, had  official duties of his own. Minseok boxed , trained horses. They had dinner together almost every night, either alone, with Jongdae’s family, or with  Joonmyun, Baek, and Yixing.

Jongdae could envision how easily  Chanyeol could slip into that routine, with his earnest expression while he listened to one speak and his warm singing voice.  Jongdae could picture cozy winter evenings in their sitting room, and it didn’t chafe. They would enjoy one another’s company, and part comfortably.  Chanyeol had that lovely room to go to – he himself had seen to that, and Min had found that old-fashioned bed.

“ Is something wrong ?” Chanyeol asked, having appeared at his side as if by magic.

Jongdae shook his head. Conversation flowed easily enough between them as they walked. Chanyeol could hardly bear Jongdae’s compliments about the easel, but he made up for it with his enthusiasm over learning that Jongdae stretched his own canvases and asked for the use of Chanyeol’s workshop to do so.

“Winds, of course!  Though I hope you’ll let me watch how it’s done.”

Well, that would hardly be interesting, but neither would watching him sketch the creatures in the tide pool, so Jongdae didn’t protest.

“You won’t be bored?” he asked when they arrived.

Chanyeol shook his head. 

“I can always  happily  occupy myself here .”

Which seemed true, if the way he climbed around humming to himself was any indication. Jongdae sketched the  little rocky bowl full of creatures, but half-heartedly. His eye kept being drawn to Chanyeol. Once he flipped to a blank page and made a swift sketch of  Chanyeol sitting with his knees up, staring out to sea. Jongdae  turned the page back the minute Chanyeol twitched.

“ Will it hurt them if I pull them out of the water?” he called out .

Chanyeol crouched next to him . 

“Bare rock’s probably too hot for them, but I could hold them out of the water for you,  if you like.”

Jongdae could likely have drawn the creatures as if they floated in mid-air. But he was used to taking in details, and Chanyeol’s hands were right there, cradling the sea star and the urchin.

“Doesn’t it stick you?”

“No, not as long as I’m careful.”

Such large hands to be so gentle. They curled around a small silver fish, holding it still just under the surface of the water so it wouldn’t squirm . Then he dug those long fingers down into a small depression in the sand and lifted out a flat, greenish thing.

“This one’s called a sea cookie,  which I’ve thought was funny since I was five years old.”

Jongdae grinned, then grunted his surprise when Chanyeol showed him the wriggling little hair-like things all over it. As incredible as that was, the little animal was nothing but simple lines. Jongdae noticed little ridges of scar tissue at the ends of Chanyeol’s fingers, a few pinkish scars on his hands that made Jongdae wonder whether they were from all the work at the house.

Chanyeol placed  the sea cookie  back down in the water, and it  rippled gently, making the sand shift around it until it was buried.

“Amazing,” Jongdae said.

A large  drop of water struck the top edge of the page. Jongdae  bent over the page to protect it and watched the surface of the tide pool go matte with the sudden downpour.

“O h no!” Chanyeol shouted, and Jongdae found his hands wrapped in the  brown fabric of Chanyeol’s coat.

“But you’ll get wet.”

“I can dry off, your sketches can’t,” Chanyeol said. “Here, stuff the whole thing into my hat, too , it’s thick enough to hold off the water.”

They’d barely cleared the basin before  the rain  fell steadily, angled in from the sea, and if it hadn’t been for his sketchbook, Jongdae would’ve wanted to stop and  look at the color of the clouds and how the dimmed light affected the water. But Chanyeol tugged on his elbow, and though they didn’t quite run, Jongdae was breathless and shivering by the time they flung themselves through the front door.

“Did it stay dry?” he asked.

The first thing he asked. Jongdae unwrapped his bundle.

“It did.”

“Thank the winds,” Chanyeol said with a grin. “We, however, did not.”

Jongdae  took in the sight of  Chanyeol  in soaked clothing, laughing, from close up, and his shivers abated for the moment, despite the newly chilled air.

“I’m going to go  replace cold water with hot. If you yell down when you’re out of the bath, I’ll start water for tea.”

Jongdae nodded and watched Chanyeol climb the stairs two at a time. He made poor Chanyeol wait a long time for his tea, sitting in the bath thinking of kindness and  hands  and stray constellations of freckles.


	16. Chapter 16

Minseok returned from his enjoyable excursion in approximately the state of a sailor fallen overboard but no less cheerful for all that. The boxing gym looked to be excellent, his new horse – Riptide – had just the right amount of attitude to be a challenge, and Jongin and Kyungsoo’s company was delightful.

Toben barked at all of them  for their temerity to drip in his kitchen.  Minseok squelched his way toward the sta i rs. The house was so quiet. Minseok stuck his head around the doorway to the sitting room and saw Chanyeol sprawled on cushions, wearing a  rusty-velvet robe sort of thing that made him look, with his outspread limbs poking out, rather like a sea star.

“Minseok!” he said, looking over and grinning. “Oh no, you got caught  too.”

“I’m done,” Jongdae shouted from upstairs.

Chanyeol  rose .

“I told him I’d start the kettle as soon as he was out of the bath. If Jongin and Soo look like you, I’d better make sure it’s f ul l. Go get warm!”

Chanyeol pushed him toward the stairs. “Caught too.” So his husbands had had their own adventure out of doors, and it had left Chanyeol relaxed and smiling.

How interesting.

Jongdae was still bundled in a towel drying his hair when Minseok dripped his way into the bathroom.

“Chanyeol said he’d start the kettle.”

“Thank the gods below, I ’m desperate for some tea.”

Jongdae kissed him lightly.

“I hope I left you hot water ,” he said with a grin.

“You do hope,” Minseok said . 

“Hm. Or maybe I don’t, if I’ll get in trouble later .”

What in the world had happened to bring out Jongdae’s brightness? Delightful.

Delightful to go downstairs to find the table crowded with damp men drinking tea. Delightful to  while away the rest  of the day leaned into Jongdae’s side and lurch upstairs to bed early, stretch him open, and fuck into him slow and sweet, face against his neck.

It was less delightful some hours later to wake to the crack of thunder and their curtains blowing. They listened for a while, watching light flash. Minseok tried to determine how to work the latch that would close the windows, with no success in the dark. He heard voices in the hall and pulled on his sleep pants at the soft knock.

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol said quietly.  “I don’t mean to intrude, but  I need to shut the windows .”

“Of course.”

Minseok stood back to let him in, if for no other reason than the opportunity to examine his new spouse half-dressed. Whatever Chanyeol did for his arms was applicable to his chest as well. Such nice, long lines. Wouldn’t it be amusing to map all those freckles with one’s mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol said as he passed by the bed.

Jongdae was sitting up, sheets pooled around his waist, rubbing his eyes. Minseok watched Chanyeol pause briefly to stare .

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Jongdae muttered.

Minseok joined him at the window .

“I’m sorry, I should’ve  showed you how to do this, the latch is mean t to keep them from rattling in the wind. I shouldn’t have made it so complex. ”

“Really, it’s all right.”

“Will you be  comfortable  if there’s no breeze? I could just close the shutters instead and angle them to keep most of the water out.”

Chanyeol  kept flapping his hands with his discomfort .  Minseok figured  that was an excellent excuse to lay one hand on his new spouse’s  pretty  muscled back and listen to that hushed gasp.

“Let’s do that,” Minseok said. “The breeze is so nicely cool.”

Chanyeol leaned out into the storm to haul the shutters closed,  after which drops of rain trickled down his skin.  Lightning flashed again, making him  a pillar of light and shadow, and the  wind blew his hair off his face.  It rather gave one ideas.

“There, that ought to keep out most of the rain,” Chanyeol said once both sets of shutters were closed. “I’m sorry to disturb your sleep.”

“We would hardly wish to wake in our own tide pool, Chanyeol.”

That, at least, made Chanyeol smile.

“See you in the morning,” he said.

It was a rainy morning to follow their rainy night, the breeze still deliciously cool, even if the Tirans were all in long sleeves and coats indoors, complaining. Kyungsoo baked bread – a process that had Yixing hovering in the kitchen with curiosity and that made the house smell cozy. Jongdae, of course, stood at the window, staring out at the colors of the sky and sea, until he disappeared into his studio.

They made a comfortable group, lounging in the sitting room (except for Joonmyun, still  perching in a chair) while Sehun and then Chanyeol peppered them with a hundred questions about Viridan. Baekhyun spun a tale of the midwinter festivals that had Chanyeol’s eyes shining with excitement.

“And then we’ll have spring to early summer in Isatis. What’s that like? You so rarely speak of it.”

Minseok caught Joonmyun ’ s wry glance.

“We’ll be left very much to our own devices in Isatis,” Minseok said. “ And the countryside is very beautiful that time of year.”

Baekhyun snorted . Minseok watched Chanyeol attempt to make sense of the statement and come up , as expected, with nothing. 

Ah well.  Best to prepare for reality.

“It was only to cater to the Viridanian sense of fairness that the original treaty required any time spent in Isatis.  The court cares about the treaty, not my presence.”

That certainly made Chanyeol glower.

“I  did notice that you don’t seem to be particularly close with your mother,” he said, hesitation in his voice.

“Well, you know, at court men serve only one purpose, and as a blood relative of both the  ruler and the heir, I can’t serve it, so what use could I possibly be?”

Sometimes it was damned awkward coming from a small and secretive country. Poor Chanyeol briefly looked as if he might succumb to apoplexy. Best to get it all out of the way, Minseok supposed.

“And I find it  uncomfortabl e that two of my former lovers and my close childhood companion rank among both my mother’s and sister’s favorite bed-partners. So Dae and I rather keep to ourselves while we’re there.”

“Two of?” Chanyeol said in what was definitely a squeak.

All these  countries with  windy, rocky gods and their notions of chastity.  There wasn’t much Minseok appreciated about his home country, but  the encouragement to put one’s body to its most pleasurable use was possibly his favorite . 

But Chanyeol’s eyes were as wide as coins behind his spectacles. It wouldn’t do at all to take anyone so ignorant home. Minseok was  _ relatively _ certain he had finally convinced  Luhan  to stop trying to creep into their bed to join, but the likelihood of arriving at the lodge to find something like “HAPPY FUCKING” spelled out in rose petals on the bed was fairly high.

Minseok caught Chanyeol staring at him  over dinner . Staring at his mouth, one rather thought.

Trust Baekhyun to bring the whole thing back up at dinner,  ostensibly for Jongdae’s benefit. Jongdae, used to  Baek’s trouble-making,  tried to deflect the conversation with  commentary about the comfort of their Isatian lodge , to no avail .

“You just don’t expect the rumors to be true,” Sehun said. “Next you’ll be telling me my nurse was right that some mysterious lady will climb down out of the trees with poison darts for naughty children.”

Unfortunately, they were all deep enough into the wine that no one’s poker face was particularly good, so the  ensuing reaction alarmed all the Tirians.

“ We’re hardly demons who live in treehouses ,” Minseok said once the cringing was  on an ebb.  “But the sneak attacks and the poison are real enough.  I highly recommend  against  angering my mother, that’s a terrible way to die.”

“What does that mean?” Chanyeol asked.

“An attempt was made on my life when I was  eight ,” Minseok said. “My mother thought it would be instructive  for me to  witness the outcome.  It’s possible that she thought  I would find it comforting to watch my would-be assassin  scream himself to death while vomiting blood, though it didn’t quite work out that way.”

♕♕♕

Chanyeol could no sooner have stopped himself from hugging Minseok after that  statement  than he could’ve stopped being short-sighted.  The flat disinterest in Minseok’s tone was almost the worst of it, as if he hadn’t been a child, a little boy forced to watch something Chanyeol could barely imagine. He had gotten used to Minseok speaking with so much warmth, he hated that cold voice.

It was just beginning to occur to him that this was technically the first time he had  embraced  either of his husbands on purpose, and that it might not be exactly welcome, when Minseok’s arms went around his waist.

Minseok’s hair smelled of cedar, and his thumb rubbed up and down next to Chanyeol’s spine briefly. Chanyeol wanted to tilt his head, rest his cheek against that hair, and stay for a long time. But of course he would have to have made an emotional fool of himself in front of a crowd, which made staying impossible.

“Sorry,” Chanyeol whispered, and those arms squeezed him tighter.

“It was a long time ago,” Minseok said as he gently extricated himself. “My mother had been on the throne for five years without an heir, and a  distant faction of cousins got greedy. It’s all settled now. Between my sister and my niece, succession is assured  for the foreseeable future, so the court is perfectly safe.”

“Your … niece?” Jongin creaked.

“Yes, she’s two, and so obviously too young to travel to the wedding,” Minseok said .

“I thought your sister  seemed  very young,” Chanyeol said. 

“She’s eighteen. Isatian women make their own decisions about when they wish to bear children. Minhee thought it wise to do so as soon as was reasonable.”

Chanyeol had learned about all this, of course. But it seemed so much more shocking, to be so immediate.  For it to  be people he had met, people he would know his whole life, and so different from anything he had ever known. Spending a third of each year in a place where his own value would be negligible. 

Chanyeol had always known that as the second child, his value was slightly on the ornamental side, that he would be married off for some kind of political or economic advantage. But he had never doubted that his family would do their best to make it a happy match.

He never doubted that they loved him for himself.

Minseok’s mother had jumped immediately to his defense with Cousin Eunji. Yet she  would evidently have been content to send  Minseok off to Viridan forever. She  had made her own son watch someone die.

Chanyeol  reached over to squeeze Minseok’s arm. Minseok laid one hand over his.

Sehun cracked a joke, and Chanyeol let the rest of the evening’s conversation flow around him while he tried not to clutch at Minseok too much.

If the eyebrows were anything to go by, he was less successful at not-clutching than Jongdae would’ve preferred.

♕♕♕

“ Me  too,” Jongdae said when Chanyeol announced his intention to head upstairs early.

He ignored Baekhyun’s smirk. And Jongin’s little “oh!” 

Chanyeol couldn’t know how long it had been  after their marriage  until Minseok stopped being surprised by affection that wasn’t intended as foreplay. He couldn’t know about the way Minseok had peppered Jongdae with questions, their first months in Viridan, about why they were “required” to dine with the family so often, why  Jongdae’s family  kept inquiring as to how he spent his time and whether he found their rooms comfortable , and why he was invited to join the stable master on buying runs simply because he had expressed an interest in training horses .

Minseok himself didn’t know that Jongdae had seen, their first winter in Viridan, when Min had been recovering from a late winter flu and his mother had bustled into their  sitting  room, saying,

“I won’t stay long,  no one likes to be stared at when they’re ill. But I wanted to check on you. Dr. Zhang is all very well, but a maternal eye requires its own observation.”

She had tucked Min’s dressing gown closer around his throat and adjusted his pillow.

And when she turned away, he caught her hand and held it briefly against his cheek. Closed his eyes when she stroked his hair.

Their first months in Isatis, there had been innumerable suggestions, as casually made as invitations to play cards, from men, women, and groups of each to join them in their bed. Jongdae had been nearly ready to call out that wretched Luhan for sneaking into their lodge so often, before Min was able to convince him that they weren’t interested. 

Jongdae had fretted about it, had been  irritable in the face of feeling inadequate, or prudish, knowing himself to be the one not interested, until  Zitao had cornered him after a fencing lesson.  Jongdae had braced for yet another proposition, only to be met with,

“You talk to Min like Yifan does. As if you want to know his thoughts for their own sake, and not as a means to an end.”

“Of course I do,” Jongdae had snapped.

Ready to fight with words, where he knew he might win, despite having just had his balls handed to him on the piste.

“I like it,” Zitao had said, and turned away.

And Chanyeol’s first instinct, upon hearing Min’s horrible story, had been to hug him. He didn’t demand explanations. He didn’t even hang on for long. He had simply folded Minseok into an embrace of obvious concern and watched him carefully afterward with worry clear in his eyes.

This man who brought them hats to protect them from the sun, and carved easels into objects of beauty, and sent his dogs away. Who crept into their bedroom in his own house like he thought he was an intruder, despite having an actual purpose.

All of those Isatian propositions had been intrusions.

Jongdae was no longer sure that their new spouse would be. Perhaps he might simply be  _ more _ .

“You really are Prince Soft-Heart,” he said when he and Chanyeol reached the top of the stairs.

Which made Chanyeol’s face crumple, damn the airless heights, even though Jongdae had tried to speak gently. He turned so red and bit his lip, staring at the floor.

“You must think me hopelessly naïve,” Chanyeol said.

Jongdae sighed around his own awkward self-knowledge that a scant week ago, he would’ve agreed, and it would’ve been as unkind and untrue as it was now. He grasped Chanyeol’s forearm and held it until Chanyeol met his eye.

“I really do not, Chanyeol,” he said.

He watched Chanyeol blink rapidly behind his spectacles and the barest trace of a smile curve one side of Chanyeol’s mouth upwards.

“Good night, husband,” he said.

“Good night,” Chanyeol said through a widening smile.


	17. Chapter 17

They made no agreement about it, but the three of them found themselves  spending the next several days together , starting with an invitation to dinner at the palace that solved the mystery of how Sehun, with his fear of horses, ever left , via a paved road over the ridge behind the house .

“Bicycles have zero teeth and never move in an unexpected direction,” he said primly.

“Not to mention which, anyone riding into town will get there so long before you that they’ll send a motorcar back  for you,” Jongin laughed.

“It would be rude to turn down  such a kind offer of assistance.”

Regardless, a motorcar took them to the palace, and they had the same suite of rooms as on the night of their wedding to dress. Chanyeol met them in the sitting room wearing a dark blue suit as sleek as anything Minseok might see among their set in Viridan, aside from the scarf draped around his neck in lieu of a cravat.

“You look very well,” Jongdae said, and Chanyeol grinned at the floor while he smoothed his hand down the front of his coat.

Minseok could see Chanyeol’s family wishing to ask questions and refraining from doing so, to their credit.  They were kind in asking about how he and Jongdae liked the house, as easy and friendly as  Viridan’s rulers. 

Yoora took in Chanyeol’s spectacles and freckles with pursed lips, until an elbow from her mother made her shake her head and laugh. Chanyeol looked sheepish just long enough for Yoora to hug him, and the matter seemed settled. Then the Princess Royal of Tiria turned her considerable charisma on Jongdae.

“I’m extremely pleased by all my new brothers,” she said, holding onto Jongdae’s hand , “but I was so diverted by my brother His Royal Highness of Viridan that I’d like to send him a gift, does he play chess?”

“He does,” Jongdae said .

Minseok loved that tentative smile of his, and the way his eyebrows tilted up in the center.

“He loves puzzles as well.”

Though he didn’t know the cause of it,  Minseok wasn’t sorry that his comment inspire d Chanyeol to grab his elbow.

“ Sister , do you remember my draughts board?”

Yoora nodded.

“Sehun gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday, made by a toymaker here in town. The board itself is nothing unusual, but he made the case a puzzle box, it took me three months to figure out how to get the damned thing open.”

“That sounds perfect,” Jongdae said. “He’ll love that.”

“Splendid,” Yoora said, and drifted away to charm more unwary victims.

“If he’s figured out how to open it by the time we get to Viridan, I’ll owe you a forfeit,” Chanyeol said with a grin.

Minseok watched pink spread across Jongdae’s cheeks. He himself could think of any number of forfeits he would demand . He was delighted that Jongdae’s blush was followed by a smile.

“Done,” Dae said, and Minseok’s husbands shook on the bet.

Dinner was enjoyable, despite being  vastly more formal than  those  of the past week. It being nothing official, the three of them were allowed to sit together , which gave Minseok  the chance to enjoy Chanyeol pointing out to Jongdae every dish that had the merest scrap of crab in it and keeping his own wineglass never less than two-thirds full.

“You’re going to have to tell me what your favorite is at some point,” Chanyeol said.

“Anything but raw oysters,” Minseok laughed.

Best of all was the end of the evening, when Chanyeol offered up  the idea of staying until morning, and Jongdae echoed Minseok’s own sentiment when he said,

“No, let’s go home.”

Chanyeol’s smile took over his face. It was so easy to please him, but that ease didn’t make the pleasure of doing so any less, in Minseok’s opinion. They drove slowly, with the  motor car’s top down so they could see the stars and smell the salt air, to find the house lit up with golden light and their friends ready to welcome them.

They rode together the next day, up onto the headland to the south, where Chanyeol said the ground was solid enough to give Riptide his head. Jongdae’s Morningstar was offended by the idea that anyone should be faster than himself, and the two of them chased one another around for a while, Chanyeol and Angel jogging along behind them.

A delightful morning.

“Tell me about when you met as children,” Jongdae said when the three of them sat down to lunch.

Minseok  hooked his foot around Jongdae’s ankle under the table while Chanyeol grinned.

“I made such a fool of myself,” he said. “Minseok seemed so  impressive. All of his buttons were buttoned the correct way, and he didn’t have a single scuff mark on his shoes. ”

“Impressive?” Minseok laughed, “I was  nine years old!”

“Well, you know that’s very grown-up when one is five,” Chanyeol said. “And the only thing I had going for me was my puppy, and  that was a disaster.”

“I felt so terrible for how upset you were. You probably don’t remember, but I had a cloth cat sent to you as an apology.”

Chanyeol became suddenly interested in the grain of the table .

“I remember,” he said. “I, er. Still have it. Back at the palace.”

Minseok watched Jongdae, who wouldn’t have admitted to his sentimentality  even under  vicious torture, come close to death from the sheer amount of adorable.

Soon they were engrossed in planning outings for their remaining week and a half in the house: down the coast to the Abbey of the Benthic Deeps and the lure of their collection of sculpture; a trip for Jongdae and Chanyeol to the shipyard; a day-long sail out to a pretty island not far offshore. All of it sounding very pleasant indeed.

“Soo!” Chanyeol called out . “Do you know whether Sehun asked his parents about using their cutter? ”

Kyungsoo appeared around the kitchen door, scowling.

“I don’t,” he said.

“Do you know where he is?”

“The princes’ staff has him,” Kyungsoo said. “Again.”

“Oh. Do you mind fetching him, I’d like to make sure it’s all right,” Chanyeol said.

Kyungsoo closed his eyes briefly.

“Chanyeol,” he said. “I mean that the Viridanians are currently having him. All three of them. And there isn’t enough money in the royal treasury for me to go  _ fetch  _ him.”

“Oh,” Chanyeol said.

Kyungsoo stalked away. Minseok  had a moment where it seemed that the world needed to reconfigure itself under him.

That was certainly an explanation for why no one could seem to find anyone else, recently.

“Oh,” Chanyeol repeated.

Minseok watched a shutter fall down over Chanyeol’s face and felt his heart sink with it. When Chanyeol stood, Minseok wanted to reach for him, but didn’t dare.

“Excuse me,” Chanyeol said. “I have to – excuse me.”

They watched him go.

What a pity.

Was there something about the sea air? If nothing else, he would’ve expected a bit more discretion toward their host from Joonmyun, this was wretched.

“It does seem unfair that the newlywed in the house is the only one  whom  no one will touch,” Minseok said after a pause so long that Jongdae ’s fingernails were curled into the wood of the table.

“Jongin and Kyungsoo,” Jongdae rasped.

“Have been together for years,” Minseok said. “They’re remarkably discreet but had no hesitation in telling me when we went to town together.”

What a ridiculous knot. How had he not seen this coming?

And with such terrible timing, too – just when the three of them had begun to be easier around one another. Just when the wariness with which Jongdae’s eyes followed Chanyeol had been replaced by curiosity.

“You want to touch him,” Jongdae said.

Of all the things Minseok wanted, that was certainly toward the forefront. But more than that, he wanted to speak aloud, to lay everything out in the light of the sun and determine how they might all fit together.

“I want to fuck him,” Minseok said. “And I will, soon.  Will you let that make trouble between us, my love?”

He kept his hands to himself and made Jongdae come to his answer with no influence. That Jongdae looked more troubled than angry told Minseok what he wanted to know . It gave him hope that this was little more than a small rockfall.  They could dust themselves off from this, bandage their wounds, and clear the path forward, with patience.

“I’ll try not to,” Jongdae said eventually.

Minseok held him close for a long time, until neither of them was stiff as trees anymore. 

“What a mess,” Jongdae murmured into his neck eventually. “Which of them do we need to throw off a cliff, do you think?”

Minseok tightened his hold around a grin. He was so pleased not to be included in the potential cliff victims.

“Isn’t our policy generally to blame Baekhyun until proved otherwise?”

Jongdae smiled at him. It was a decent attempt, only a little sad around the edges.

“Right.”

“I love you,” Minseok said. “No matter what.”

Jongdae nodded and kissed him before retreating to his paint.

Chanyeol had returned by dinner, with wet hair and smelling of the sea , exhaustion plain on his face while he sat tucked up close to Jongin. He was perfectly polite, but they were all  trained in etiquette: his friendly-seeming distance fooled no one. Joonmyun and Baekhyun’s glances at one another were sharp, and Sehun lapsed quickly into utter silence (a i ded by Kyungsoo’s glare). 

Thank the gods below for Yixing,  who announced his intention to put on an impromptu concert after dinner,  giving everyone the opportunity to do something other than pretend to talk.

Chanyeol didn’t quite  draw away when Minseok sat next to him on the cushions . He was not at all successful in hiding the sorrow in his glance when Minseok leaned his head against Jongdae’s knee.

Jongdae didn’t speak of it when they lay together in bed, but he clung to Minseok, and neither of them found much by way of rest. When Jongdae rose for his by-now-customary dawn brooding out the window, Minseok followed him, arms around his waist and chin on his shoulder.

The explanation for why Jongdae had startled at his touch emerged up the path several minutes later, and it was only the excellence of the view that kept Minseok from pinching Dae.

“I wondered why you’d suddenly become an early riser,” he said once Chanyeol could no longer be seen.

Jongdae gave an irritated sigh.

“Not that I blame you, it’s a marvelous sight,” Minseok teased.

Jongdae growled and failed to wriggle out of Minseok’s embrace.

“It’s too new, I’m not ready,” Jongdae said when he sagged back against Minseok’s chest.

Minseok kissed the side of his neck.

“I know, love,” he said. “I’m not asking you to push, just to accept.”

Jongdae nodded, and Minseok pulled him back to bed to stroke his hair. His cautious husband, so wary even of his own desire.

“I wouldn’t want you to be ready anyway,” he said. “After all, it took you  over  a month to want to kiss me, and I can’t have my record overturned.”

He thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing attack and the couple extra hours of sleep after that.

Chanyeol was gone by the time they rose, having left word with Kyungsoo that he had “duties to attend to” and not returning until nearly sunset. The three of them grimaced at one another. Jongdae spent the day closed up in his studio and Minseok on horseback, trying to work out nerves with no success.

The day after, Chanyeol merely went as far as his woodshop. Minseok respected the closed door but kept watch, at the kitchen table with a new novel and Toben circling his feet. When Chanyeol slunk in after lunch, Minseok gave him almost half an hour before he followed upstairs.

Jongdae was in his studio,  and everyone else had made themselves scarce . Minseok tested Chanyeol’s door and found it unlocked. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

In the filtered light, Minseok could hardly make out the freckles that he knew  were cast across Chanyeol’s back and shoulders. He lay on his stomach,  one arm thrown over a pillow and face turned away. Minseok looked at him and wished that he had been brave enough to act sooner, to spare this new husband of his  days of heartache. 

He pulled off his clothes and slipped between the sheets.

♕♕♕

Chanyeol  had the novel experience of waking to a hand trailing down his bare back. It took a moment for his eyes to resolve the face in front of him as Minseok’s.

Why would Minseok be in his room? With his hand?

“Is everything all right?”

Minseok smiled mostly in his eyes .

“I thought I might kiss you, Yeollie . If you’d like.”

Chanyeol felt his pulse just about triple in speed , from the nickname, or the suggestion. Or maybe from the way  Minseok’s fingers  rested lightly under his ear. What was he supposed to say?

“ Has anybody ever kissed you before?”

Chanyeol’s cheeks burned while he shook his head . But surely Minseok had already known that. Surely it had been as obvious as the tide. 

“Shall I, then?”

His shoulders still  burned from the leagues he had swum the past  couple of days in lieu of weeping – though he had done a bit of that too. He’d planed an  entire board into curls of sawdust , so his wrists ached  as well . His eyes  and head  ached from most of the previous day spent staring out at the glare of the sea.  From too little sleep and  frustrated tears.

Perhaps it had been temper on his part, to run away and brood. But it stung, to be the only person around whom no one wanted. Just when it felt as if the three of them were starting some kind of friendliness that could be built upon, to learn that even Sehun had a whole crowd to choose from while he himself had – awkwardness. Waiting. Uncertainty. It had brought everything Cousin Eunji said back to the forefront of his mind and tasted bitter in his mouth.

And here Minseok was, in his  _ bed, _ offering him the chance to be wanted. To know.

Only one of them, granted, but Minseok was still his husband.  Chanyeol wanted that to be sufficient to make it all right to be selfish, just this once.

“Yes.”

He trembled when Minseok ran one thumb over his lower lip and smiled. How was a face so beautiful close to his? Was he allowed to touch Minseok’s face as well? Minseok had said “two of” his former lovers, Chanyeol must seem like an infant in comparison – 

“I don’t know how,” he whispered.

“No one does at the start,” Minseok said. “Thankfully , practicing is quite enjoyable. Close your eyes, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol closed his eyes. He felt Minseok’s fingers trace his cheek, then  a light touch against his lips , the warmth of Minseok’s breath, and a firmer press of Minseok’s mouth.

So that was what it was like.

Minseok pushed him onto his back and kissed him again, lips moving over his own, slow and warm. The hand wrapped around the back of his neck made Chanyeol tilt his chin up. He felt Minseok smile against his mouth and tried to copy the way Minseok’s lips had clung to his. Minseok hummed, kissed him a little more eagerly, slid his hand slowly down Chanyeol’s arm to his wrist, which he lifted, placing Chanyeol’s hand on his own back – low enough down that it was apparent that he wasn’t wearing anything.

Before Chanyeol could do more than briefly freeze, Minseok’s thumb tugged at his chin. He felt Minseok’s tongue lick his bottom lip; his mouth opened as if by instinct, and if anyone had asked him previously whether he would ever want someone else’s tongue inside his mouth, Chanyeol would’ve told them no, and he would’ve been wrong, because the sensation of Minseok licking the inside of his upper lip, prodding gently at his own tongue, had Chanyeol gasping.

He opened his mouth wider,  tried to kiss back  without thinking  too much about  how bad he must be at it.  When Minseok sucked on his bottom lip, Chanyeol’s hand moved on its own, sliding down to cup the bare skin of his ass,  and Minseok rolled forward to press against Chanyeol’s hip.  Chanyeol broke the kiss to stare at him . Minseok was as hard as he was , his body was so warm .

“What do you use when you  touch yourself?” Minseok murmured .

Chanyeol meant to freeze, to cringe and blush, but Minseok kissed a spot under his ear that Chanyeol never knew was composed entirely of nerve endings that were directly attached to his cock, so after a couple of minutes of that, Chanyeol scrambled for the little bottle of oil tucked between his mattress and the bed frame.

Minseok grinned, tipped the bottle over his fingers, and Chanyeol heard his own strangled croak when Minseok’s hand wrapped around him. It was so different, to be touched by someone else. Minseok’s hand was smaller than his own, his grip tighter, his mouth working that spot on Chanyeol’s neck again so that he barely had time to fix the sensations in his mind before he clutched at Minseok’s shoulders and bit his lip to keep silent while he spent onto his belly.

“My turn,” Minseok said with a grin when Chanyeol opened his eyes.

Chanyeol rolled over and reached for  him. He was clumsy and spilled the oil everywhere, but Minseok merely laughed and kissed him, arched up with a hiss when Chanyeol  grasped him.

“Fast, Yeollie,” he said. “Watch me while you do it.”

Chanyeol ignored his protesting arm muscles and gave Minseok what he asked for, fast and a little rough, watching how Minseok dipped his chin and set his teeth into his bottom lip, how his hair  fell into  his bright eyes , until he  grabbed Chanyeol’s wrist and tipped his head back with a guttural cry.

Chanyeol had never been so proud of anything in his life.

Minseok cupped his cheek with his clean hand and drew his face down for a kiss.

“Thank you, husband,” he said, with laughter in his voice.

Chanyeol  felt  a rush of something wriggling and happy. He burrowed his head up against Minseok’s neck and hummed his  approval of Min’s arms going around him, lips against the top of his head.

He dozed a little, face mashed against Min’s sweaty skin, despite his disbelief that he had actually, finally been relieved of some level of his virginity. With a little experience to go on, that conversation with his aunt and uncle gained new clarity, and his level of interest in learning more increased geometrically.

He thought he heard a soft click, and Minseok shifted under him, kissed his head again. Of course Min wouldn’t want to stay here all day, no matter how excellent an idea that sounded. The house was full of people, after all, and probably Jongdae would – 

Chanyeol sat up and rubbed his hand over his face. Min kissed him lightly, swiped at himself with the sheet, and  climbed out of bed to dress.

And Chanyeol knew he had to ask.

“Is this supposed to be a secret?”

Minseok gazed at him while he tied the drawstring of his  pants.

“From whom?”

Chanyeol cringed.

“From Jongdae?” Min asked gently, and Chanyeol nodded.

“Do you want it to be?”

Chanyeol remembered his determination that he would never do anything to hurt what they had, and he hated himself a little for his moment of selfishness . He hated that he had felt so wanted in Minseok’s arms, if that was the cost.

“If it has to be a secret from him, I don’t want this again,” he said.

But Min smiled at him: such a bright, fond smile. He climbed back over to sit on Chanyeol’s legs and kiss him, warm and sweet.

“You’re a lovely person,” Minseok said. “And this isn’t a secret. Dae knew I wanted this. I’d like to tell him about it, if that’s acceptable to you.”

Chanyeol examined the little hollow at the base of Min’s throat . It was easier to look there and ask awkward questions.

“Will he be upset?”

“ He might. ”

Chanyeol frowned. Minseok stroked his cheek with one thumb.

“As I said, Chanyeol, I told him that I wanted this. With you. You’re our husband. Nothing about this is wrong, he knows that.”

Wrong and upsetting were two wholly different matters, though.  He couldn’t have borne secrecy,  it would’ve been too terrible, but he and Jongdae had just started to become comfortable with another, and to have  injured that…

“If you’ll allow me to tell him the details,  your concern for his reaction is one I’d like to include.”

Chanyeol looked up at that. Min’s grey eyes wore such a warm expression that it made Chanyeol feel better.

“All right,” he said.

Minseok’s head titled to one side .

“Do you want  him, too? ”

“Of course, I’m married to both of you.”

Min pinched his earlobe.

“You want him only for the sake of that contract, then? To keep your horrible cousin at bay?”

Chanyeol was not one bit surprised that a lack of clothing only increased Minseok’s trouble-causing. He lurched forward, tossing Min on his back and lying on top of him.

“No,” he said, “I want him because he’s just as compelling as you are and potentially less maddening.”

Minseok laughed and pulled him down for a kiss. If Jongdae were here too, they could probably work it out to spend the entire day kissing. An entire day might almost be enough.

“Jongdae is plenty maddening,” Min said when he set Chanyeol’s mouth free. “Not the least in how long  he requires  to allow himself to take what he wants.”

Th e implication of th at stole Chanyeol’s breath momentarily.

“Yeollie, what do you want of us?” Minseok asked .

Chanyeol let himself feel brave. He had to, with Min’s arms around him.

“I want you to love me,” he said. “Both of you.”

The next set of kisses was sweet er than summer strawberries.

“I think we will, if you give us time,” Min said.  “If you’ll be patient with our  wary spouse. ”

Kissing while smiling was a bit of a challenge, but worth the effort.

“What do I do?”

“Chanyeol,” Minseok said, wriggling under him in a way that made Chanyeol want to take those pants back off him, “ would you mind terribly if I took you under my wing to teach you all the ways this lovely body of yours can feel amazing?”

“Um. No,” Chanyeol said around a head rush in two places at once.

“Splendid. Then as I plan to keep none of this secret from Jongdae, I’ll take care of seducing him for you.”

He tugged on Chanyeol’s hair.

“So all you need do is make yourself clear and be your own sweet self.”

♕♕♕

There weren’t many things that could pull Jongdae immediately out of the fugue in front of his paints, but the sound Minseok made when he came appeared to be one of them. Jongdae heard it, faint from upstairs.

He gave himself the time to clean his brushes and set them upright in a cup to dry.  Gave them time, maybe.

Was it unfair of him, that he was relieved not to find them in his room?  He was surprised not to  find them in Minseok’s room , and hesitated a little before he  turned the knob on Chanyeol’s door.

Jongdae expected to feel jealous, looking in at  Minseok holding Chanyeol tucked up against his chest. But Min opened his eyes and smiled at Jong d ae with the same warmth he always did . 

Minseok nodded to his right , mouthed “bedroom.” Jongdae  went to their room and waited in front of the window , hardly knowing what he felt ,  other  than pure relief when the click of their door was followed by Min’s arms going around his waist, Min’s lips against the back of his neck.

He let Min pull him to the bed, tucked his head into Min’s shoulder, one leg draped over him. Smelled the familiar scents of sweat and sex, overlaid with something citrusy, which must be from Chanyeol. He let the familiar sensation of Minseok’s hand in his hair, fingers stroking his shoulder, lull him into letting go of the tension in his chest.

When Jongdae sighed, Minseok kissed the top of his head.

“He told me that he didn’t want me to touch him again if it had to be a secret from you.”

Jongdae turned that over in his mind. 

“You don’t keep secrets from me, though,” he said.

Minseok squeezed him, then rolled hi m over on his back to look down at him, one hand on his cheek.

“I do not,” Min said. “Including the part where Chanyeol was quite concerned about your reaction.”

Of course he was. Jongdae knew their new spouse at least that well. The only part that surprised him was that Chanyeol would’ve accepted Min’s overture without protest – except for how crushed he had looked, standing by the kitchen table, before he ran away, and how tired and defeated he had looked that night, leaned against Jongin, Kyungsoo’s arm around his shoulders.

That, of course, brought to mind his recent memory of Chanyeol’s russet hair against Minseok’s skin, his hand literally covering Min’s shoulder.  Min gave a low, soft laugh at the look on his face and kissed him.

“You know he’s more untouched than even you were,” Min whispered against his lips. “No one had ever even kissed him before.”

Jong dae pulled Minseok’s hips flush against his own.

“No need to train him out of bad habits taught to him by wayward  baronesses?”

Min grinned at him.

“So much tongue, it really was unnecessary, Jongdae.”

“Thankfully you corrected my behavior.”

Min kissed his jaw , sucked on his earlobe.

“Weren’t those days delicious?”

His hand worked Jongdae’s shirt upward, stroked his stomach.

“Learning one another’s bodies . How eager you were  for me to show you what I knew.”

Jongdae gasped his name when Min’s mouth moved over his collarbone, the scrape of teeth and the swipe of his tongue.

“What would you show him, hm? If it had been you in that bed?”

Minseok unbuttoned Jongdae’s flies, mouth still moving over his shoulder. Jongdae tried to think how he would answer and found coherence difficult to muster, especially when Min licked one hand and grasped him.

“All that lovely skin you’ve been staring at each morning, my love,” Minseok said. “And I barely touched any of it. All it took was this for him to come for me.”

He sucked Jongdae’s neck, hand moving swiftly, and Jongdae could see it in his mind,  Min’s dark hair against Chanyeol’s freckled shoulder, Chanyeol’s expression of surprise .

“Min.”

“You come for me like this too, Jongdae.”

Easy enough.

They could hear music from outside by the time they were both clean and re-dressed: Chanyeol and Yixing outside on a blanket with their guitars, Joonmyun humming along with his head on Yixing’s shin. Chanyeol looked up with a wide-eyed smile and a blush when Jongdae and Minseok stepped outside. There was their evening set – quiet and soft. No one talked about much of anything, and half the songs trailed off into silence. By some unspoken agreement, as the sun got low, anytime anyone went inside they brought food or wine back out with them.

Jongdae let himself sink into lassitude, the quiet and heat melting into his bones while he leaned against Minseok, Min’s arm around him, and watched Chanyeol through half-lidded eyes, the way his fingers moved on the guitar strings, and the frequency with which he glanced at the two of them with a shy smile. Jongdae watched Sehun inch closer over the course of the evening until he sat with his head on Chanyeol’s shoulder, looking relieved to have forgiveness.  Jongdae wondered whether he even knew what he had forgiveness for.

Chanyeol followed them upstairs. Jongdae watched him try to gather the courage to say something under Minseok’s amused gaze. Jongdae prepare d for how he would phrase his refusal when Chanyeol asked to join them.

“Shall we go to the abbey tomorrow, as we planned?” Chanyeol asked. “Or, will you – um – need a thinking day, Jongdae?”

“What?” Jongdae blurted.

Minseok didn’t bother to hide his grin. Chanyeol rubbed his nose.

“I mean. Considering. Er.”

“Developments,” Minseok drawled, still grinning.

Chanyeol cringed. Jongdae thought they might both be approximately the same shade of crimson.

A "thinking day.”

It was obviously a ridiculous way to put it as if he were some sort of philosopher, which was absolutely not the case, he just needed space sometimes to plan his own course of action so he could avoid surprises, and while it was perhaps very generous of Chanyeol to have noticed that - 

Oh, it was generous, wasn’t it? Even if said with a stammer and a blush. A stammer and a blush that gave weight to Min’s statement that he had been worried.

Jongdae shook his head.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“In the afternoon?” Chanyeol said. “The abbey’s all stone and wonderfully cool, even in the worst heat.”

“That sounds lovely, Yeollie,” Minseok said.

Jongdae started, but it occurred to him that nicknames were probably appropriate at this point. Given the aforementioned – developments. A s was  the way that Min reached up and pulled Chanyeol down for a lingering, if closed-mouth, kiss. Jongdae felt his eyebrows leap toward his hairline.

He felt his cock twitch with interest at the way their mouths moved together.

When Minseok let him go, Chanyeol gave a heavy breath and smiled. Then Jongdae found himself enveloped in a  large amount of spouse. He hung onto Chanyeol’s collar in sheer surprise at being  so entirely surrounded. He discovered that the citrus scent was  in fact Chanyeol’s soap . 

“Sleep well,” Chanyeol murmured up against Jongdae’s ear, making him shiver.

Because of course sleep was going to be the easiest thing in the world, between  the perplexities of these two vexatious  persons  whom he had married.

He did find himself sitting  in the spot where he liked to observe the colors of the sea the next morning, a cup of tea cooling between his palms. He should’ve known better than to give in to the urge to rise at dawn and stare out the window, now that Min knew the reason why. Because of course Min had gotten  up too. And therefore of course they were standing together when Chanyeol paused in his walk back to the house, looked up at their window, and saw them.

Minseok had chuckled under his breath while he returned Chanyeol’s wave. And there had been more hugging at breakfast, accompanied by a great deal of facial expression on Kyungsoo’s part, and  Min ’s endless questions about swimming in the ocean : which might have been genuine interest, though they had the effect of giving Jongdae a continual reminder of  his daily morning view.

What constituted “ready”? Sadly, Jongdae’s teacup held no answers.

Baekhyun sat next him, close enough to lean against.

“I guess I’m going to have to buy my own dark spectacles, as I don’t have a spouse nice enough to give me some,” he said, holding up  one hand against the glare of the sun on the water.

“You’ve all been somewhat busy to think of such details, it seems.”

Baek laughed and put an arm around his waist.

“Gods above and below, what are we doing with ourselves, Dae?”

He leaned his head onto Jongdae’s shoulder.

“We caused a bit of a mess for you, I think. Is Chanyeol all right?”

For a moment, Jongdae could only shake his head .

“He is now .  Min – well.”

“Ah,” Baek said. “Letting you know beforehand, I hope?”

“Of course.”

There were questions he should ask, Jongdae knew.  What were they? 

“Baek, I don’t know how,” he said.

Baekhyun hugged him. Baekhyun who had been a constant his whole life. He had found a way to make it work.

“Joonie was the one who wanted Yixing, originally,” he said.

Jongdae looked at him, the wry twist of Baek’s smile. They’d married Yixing while he and Minseok were in Isatis, and  Jongdae was ashamed that he had never bothered to ask about any of this.

“It’s different for you, because you weren’t  given much choice, but I had a hard time understanding at first that Joon could want more without wanting me any  _ less _ ,” Baek said. “And poor Xing had no idea, just kept showing up at our door for dinner every day, with no idea why his friends were both suddenly so awkward.”

“How did  you resolve it?”

How did they let themselves be so happy, when there was so much risk of hurt?

“Oh, you know I have a hard time telling Joonie no about anything,” Baekhyun laughed. “He’s so earnest,  and he comes to one with his carefully prepared list of arguments,  it’s impossible to deny anything so serious and adorable. And then once he confessed to Yixing, Xing completely lost his composure, because he had fabricated a whole story in his mind that one of us had a terrible disease that we were hiding from  him because we wanted to live out our final days enjoying his friendship without burdening him with treatment, and  _ that _ was so endearing that I couldn’t hold out any longer. It was all quite damp and ridiculous, you would’ve hated it.”

Jongdae laughed .

“Jongdae. Your father was pretty set on this match from the start , once he learned that Chanyeol hadn’t had an immediate offer the minute he came of age. ”

That they had heard of, anyhow. That no one  knew anything about it was another mark against Arienne, in Jongdae’s opinion. Diplomatic matters handled in secret  were suspect at best . 

“Stop glowering,” Baekhyun said. “I figured you might have  a more traditional sort of treaty-marriage the second time around. Someone you could be friendly enough with to not mind being tied together. Do you want to know what  made me start to think otherwise?”

Jongdae nodded.

“All his nuns and sailors. ”

When nothing more was forthcoming, Jongdae pinched him, and Baekhyun grinned.

“He likes people , Dae. He’s shy , but he likes to feel useful, and he’s curious about what people around him think. You’ve seen it , how he wants to know people  s o he can know best how to please them.”

There was no point in denying it. The proof was in the house behind them.

“What you and Min have is lovely, Dae. It makes me happy to see you so content. But the two of you are so wrapped up in each other, as if you took the isolation you made for yourselves in Isatis and patterned your whole lives on it. Even if  you never let him into your bed , he’ll still be every night at your dinner table, reminding you that the world exists around you and is full of things to see.”

Like the way the sea changed color over the course of a day and that one could cook an entire meal under the ground . That one could spend an entire day comfortably without shoes.

“You should let him into your bed, though,” Baekhyun said as he climbed to his feet.  “Three’s even more fun than two.”

Jongdae lunged for his ankle, but Baek dodged and ran away laughing.


	18. Chapter 18

If Jongdae was going t o ponder at the sea, Minseok figured that the best use of his time would be to give Chanyeol another kissing lesson under the pretext of choosing a proper Tirian outfit for their ride. He was straddling Chanyeol’s  thighs with one large hand on each ass cheek and  Chanyeol making little whimpers in the back of his throat when Jongdae’s laughter sounded through the window.

How nice to know that everyone was currently enjoying themselves.

“ Slide your hand up my back and grasp my neck ,” he murmured.  “Kiss under my chin; there you go, a little more teeth, ah, good, Yeollie.”

He leaned back to look into Chanyeol’s flushed face.

“Remember that, Jongdae likes it,” he said.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, wide-eyed and smiling a little, redder than ever.

Delightful.

By the time Minseok looked over later to see Jongdae leaned against the doorframe staring at them, Chanyeol was deep into an exposition of different methods of sash-tying. 

“I had no idea they were as bad as cravats,”  Minseok said.

Chanyeol laughed, and Jongdae blinked rapidly. Minseok was so pleased.

“It doesn’t really matter, the nuns don’t care and neither do I,” Chanyeol said.  “It’s just there to  keep things looking tidier and provide a good place to tuck a pencil, anyhow.”

“I suppose I’ll look ridiculous wearing my riding habit next to you two,” Jongdae said from the doorway, making Chanyeol jump.

Really, the two of them blushed at each other like schoolgirls, Minseok wanted to gather them up and hold their faces close together until they stopped being ridiculous. Waiting until Jongdae  thought it was his own idea c ould be such a trial.

“Oh no, you look wonderful in your habit,” Chanyeol said. “But that much black, don’t you think you’d be far too hot?”

“Indeed,” Minseok said. “You know there are few things I’d rather look at than you from the back in your riding habit. But it won’t do if you ruin our outing with heat stroke.”

Chanyeol squeaked.  Jongdae turned a weary glare on him.

“Our husband is a menace, Chanyeol,” he said.

“I’m  beginning to see that,” Chanyeol said.

And because this day was shaping up to be one delight after another,  when  Jongdae joined them,  having found a pair of narrow Tirian trousers in dark green linen to go with his sandy-colored hacking jacket and paddock boots, Minseok was just realizing  that Chanyeol, in helping adjust  the drape of his  wide trousers over the top of his riding boots, was on his knees.

H ow delicious that Jongdae realized it immediately.  Minseok grinned at him. Bit his lip and skimmed his fingers through Chanyeol's hair, just to  skewer Dae a little more firmly.

It was a blistering hot ride  down to the abbey, though they rode on the shore , the horses up to their  hocks in water . The abbey was, as Chanyeol had said, made entirely of stone, low and grey with a number of outbuildings and a large garden behind it. The nun who met them in the yard greeted Chaneyol with a glad cry, and soon they were surrounded by a flock of mostly elderly women in  dark blue habits clamoring to hug their prince. All very endearing, really.

The promised sculpture collection was small, and everything Minseok knew about art he had learned from Jongdae,  but the abbey was in fact nicely cool . Jongdae went stiff when Chanyeol  told the nun  guiding them  about his painting, but she clapped her hands and immediately asked a handful of technical questions that  sent Jongdae into  painter-mode.

Minseok would’ve felt very smug and pleased about all of that, except that soon after, he found himself introduced to the nun in charge of their stable, who said,

“Well, we ’re nothing special, but  it’s been interesting to breed  up  work horses that don’t mind the heat,”

and Minseok  found himself hooked to the point that he didn’t realize it  until he was in the stable with Sister  Inhye running his hands over the haunches of one sturdy old beast, and he had to laugh.

“How long has Chanyeol been coming here?” he asked.

“Oh, since he was just a gawky lad,” Sister Inhye  grinned.  “Bless  his bones, he’ll even sit and listen to Sister  Seonhwa  talk about her devotion to Our Lady of the Deeps, and she knows neither  discretion nor succinctness on that topic. He found us when he was off on a ramble and got caught in a storm, and ever since he’s come here when he needed a bit of quiet. We pray for your happiness, Highness, and that you and your love will be good to our friend.”

“Sister, I think no one who knows him could help it,” Minseok said.

Having made a thorough tour of the stables, M i nseok and Sister Inhye  returned  to the main building, where they wandered until they found Jongdae  deep in conversation over a partially-painted canvas with Sister  Jiae . It took them rather a while to discover Chanyeol, eventually finding him in the chapel, up on a ladder in his shirtsleeves,  mending a drafty bit in the eaves.  Minseok held Jongdae’s hand while they watched , felt how Dae leaned against him. He wondered whether Tiria  was  a place out of a fairy story, where magic still existed.

“Something chewed its way in to live up here,” Chanyeol called down, “it smells quite terrible. Oh, hello.”

Jongdae waved at him .

“Well,” Chanyeol said when he  stepped off  the ladder, “it’s patched for now ,  I’ll come back in a couple of weeks when – “

Having very recently seen Chanyeol crumple with upset did nothing to temper how  distressing  it was to see again .

“I suppose I won’t be back in a couple of weeks,” he said. “We’ll be off on our wedding trip.”

Minseok watched the small crowd of nuns coo.

“Oh, now, Highness,” one of the very elderly ones said, “why’s that a reason to frown so? With two such handsome husbands to travel alongside. And you’ve stopped up our draft. If your Jongin doesn’t ride over to fix it, why, we’ll figure it out ourselves. Our Lady knows we learned plenty while you were fixing your house, not one of us is helpless.”

Jongdae squeezed  Minseok’s hand hard enough to hurt a little, watching  Chanyeol be comforted by the crowd of nuns. Even better, when they made to move out of the chapel,  Jongdae  caught  Chanyeol’s sleeve and asked in a low voice, 

“Did they help you work on our house?”

Minseok hoped that Jongdae understood the squeezing of his hand to be “well done.”

“ Originally we just brought over lunch on occasion,” Sister  Inhye said. “But you know, as a working order, none of us can resist learning a useful skill.”

Being treated to that story was how they got roped into dinner – early and unexpected, but welcome all the same. The food was plain roasted fish and vegetables cooked in seawater in the abbey’s refectory overlooking the shore. Minseok wasn’t sure how much Chanyeol had to eat, given how often he tried to hide behind his hands as the nuns brought out every possible embarrassing tale.

They left when the sun was low in the sky, riding back with Chanyeol in high spirits, racing  down the beach and back again to circle them, laughing, until Morningstar and Riptide could no longer bear  the insult to their  speed , and the three of them arrived back at the house wet and laughing.

“Thank you,” Chanyeol said when they  made their way upstairs despite the lure of everyone else lounged in the sitting room.

He hugged Jongdae close, kissed Minseok sweetly.

“Thank you for today.”

Minseok couldn’t bear the thought of Jongdae allowing such lightness to fall into worry. He gathered Dae into his arms as soon as the door was shut, kissed his neck the way he had shown Chanyeol earlier.

“You should have me, love,” he said , and found no refusal.

♕♕♕

Twice Minseok had kissed him in front of Jongdae, and neither time had Jongdae appeared upset by it.  Chanyeol counted that as a victory. He found he rather needed victories,  having had the realization at the abbey that their time at the house was more than half gone, and soon they would leave . For the  remainder  of his life, he would only ever spend 4 months at a time in Tiria . The rest of the year, he  would have to learn to be at home in Viridan or Isatis, and to be content with letters to his family and friends.

It felt strange.

Would it be enough, if he were able to embrace them? Could he talk to them, as he did to Kyungso o ? Would he be able to rely on them, as he did on Jongin?  Would they cheer him up, like Sehun did? He already knew that Minseok’s mother would be nothing like his own. But Jongdae’s family seemed warm and close. Would they allow him in?

Yixing was the one he asked about it . They had played music together, enough that Chanyeol knew him to be even-tempered and kind . He grasped Chanyeol’s hand warmly.

“You already have a place, Chanyeol,” Yixing said. “With me, certainly, and if with me, then also with my husbands.  Even if Isatis is strange, no one is hoping for this to fail. We all want your happiness, depend on that.”

He would’ve talked to Min about it, except that any time they were alone together,  Chanyeol found himself distracted by  the application of mouth and hands to his person. That had the effect of rather driving all other thoughts far from his mind .

“Put your hand around both of us, Yeollie,” Min murmured at him – which had  _ not _ been covered in the conversation with his uncle.

Chanyeol wondered what other information he was missing out on, and whether all of it was as intoxicating as the sensation of Min ’s cock sliding next to his own inside his own fist. Of course, Min  was  _ also _ touching him  everywhere his hands could reach , and shuddering deeps, how had Chanyeol never known that his  nipples were even more precarious than the spot under his ear? All it took was for Min to suck on one and set his teeth into it gently, and Chanyeol was gone with a hoarse cry, spilling all over them both.

Minseok kept kissing him and running warm hands up and down his chest until Chanyeol recovered his ability to think from somewhere  far out to sea.

“You’re so wonderfully sensitive,” he said. “You’re even more fun than I anticipated.”

Chanyeol had to hide his face at that one, pleased and shy at the same time. Anyway, kissing Min’s shoulder seem ed like a  good  way to say his thanks.

“ I can’t leave you unhappy,” he said, sliding his sticky hand down.

Min laughed.

“ Not unhappy at all, Yeolli e.  Think of it instead as leaving me simmering, so that later tonight I’ll be particularly eager to  describe your merits while I fuck Jongdae.”

That made Chanyeol feel hot all over in an entirely different way than he had several minutes prior , imagining what Jongdae might look like, what Minseok might say.

“Will you want to – do that, um, with me?” he asked.

Min gave him  a look that  put Chanyeol in mind of  several of his  past tutors, usually when he had given them an incorrect answer.

“Do what, Chanyeol?”

“ Uh, what you said.”

Min poked him in the armpit and smiled through Chanyeol’s jump.

“I am most certainly not going to do anything to you if you cannot even say what it is.”

What a dilemma.  It was a word Chanyeol had never said in any other person’s hearing,  and even then only in the context of dropping heavy and/or sharp things on his foot. But if that was what he had to do to get what he wanted …

But he wasn’t going to say it  to Min’s face. He would say it to Min’s  left shoulder instead.

“Will you fuck me?” he whispered.

He felt less embarrassed with Minseok’s hands on his cheeks and lips on his mouth.

“Is that what you want, Yeollie?  For me to have you?”

Chanyeol nodded, and Min kissed him again.

“ One thing at a time,” Min said. “We’ll work up to it, don’t worry. ”

The working up to it seemed quite delightful , so he was hardly going to complain .

♕♕♕

Minseok was driving him mad. Whatever he was doing with Chanyeol – no, cross that out, Jongdae knew  _ exactly _ what Minseok was doing with Chanyeol, in vivid detail , usually while  Min was either pulling him off or fucking him, or, on one notable occasion,  while  his mouth was stuffed full, and Min said,

“Do that with your tongue again, love,  ah. I haven’t  sucked Yeollie off yet, going to – yes – do it just like you do, Dae, you’re so fucking good at it, going to tell him all about it .”

It was scrambling his brain, worse even than the heat.

And if the expression on Chanyeol’s face later th at day was any indication, Minseok was successful in his plan, and Chanyeol was similarly incapable of  any sort of coherent thought.

It was bad (adorable) enough to watch Chanyeol flop around in a state of  pleased disbelief, wholly unable to notice the amused glances of everyone around him . But additionally, it all put Jongdae to mind  of his own similar days, his absolute shock the first time  he  had unthinkably had a  _ mouth _ on his cock, and trying to protest “what in the  hells below are you doing,” but only getting half the sentence out before Min moved his tongue and Jongdae  briefly forgot everything else.

He had probably had that same wide-eyed expression on his face, those constantly pink cheeks. He remembered feeling as if he was aware of all of his skin  and of Minseok’s presence at all times , always wanting to turn toward him like a plant toward the light.

He didn’t feel left out, because Min touched him all the time, talked to him constantly : usually about whatever he’d been doing to Chanyeol, but not always. There was plen ty of praise for himself in there, too, a n obvious  manipulation that nonetheless worked. 

Chanyeol touched him a lot too, but never in ways that made him feel pulled or  burdened . Just a hug here, a hand on his elbow there. 

One afternoon, Jongdae  startled to a soft knock on his studio door, and at his call, Chanyeol walked in, a teacup in one hand, the other hand held in front of his eyes.

“You’ve been in here for hours, I felt certain you must be thirsty,” he said. “But I’m not looking, I promise.”

He peeked around the edges of his fingers at Jongdae’s laugh.

“It’s all right, I’m just doing color studies, you can come look.”

And it was pleasant to  witness Chanyeol’s delight that the painting was to be of the rock pool, and to  answer Chanyeol’s intelligent questions about how he was tryin g to get the colors of the water and the creatures correct .

“In case it’s different by the time we return from our wedding trip .”

“It will be,” Chanyeol said. “Not every high tide reaches so far, but  with every tide, things change, that’s why it’s one of my favorite places. There’s always something new to see.”

Just like Baekhyun had said. Jongdae felt the weight of that move through him and leave him breathless.

He reached up to cup one hand around Chanyeol’s cheek. Chanyeol blinked, blushed, then closed his eyes and leaned into it.

“Let’s go there often and see,” Jongdae said when he took his hand away.

Chanyeol nodded happily.

“And now I need to find Baekhyun. What do you think the odds are that he’s not currently in a compromising position with someone?”

“Winds, I don’t even want to know,” Chanyeol groaned.

“What’s this for?” Baek asked when Jongdae found him (fully clothed , thank all the gods) and hugged him tight.

“Do I need a reason?”

“No, but there always is one.”

Jongdae pinched Baek’s side. The reason was  too complex to explain , so he just held on until Baek got bored and wriggled away.

The whole crowd of them went to town on the day Jongdae and Chanyeol chose to tour the shipyard: Minseok was to the boxing gym, Yixing with them to the shipyard, everyone else simply to town for the variety of it. Much of the diversion on the ride over was provided by Sehun, sitting behind Joonmyun with his face crushed against Joon’s neck amid Joon’s frequent reminders that he needed to be able to breathe and Sehun’s groans of misery.

“Hunnie,  you’ve never once fallen off a horse,  you’re not about to now, at a dead walk with Joonmyun holding onto you ,” Kyungsoo laughed.

“It’s not the falling off, it’s the being stepped on afterward,” Sehun moaned.

The shipyards were as interesting as Viridan’s  airyards, with the stink of tar and burnt wood instead of hot steel. The sheer amount of lumber and canvas required to build even a small  ship had Jongdae and Yixing gaping. They walked through a fish market afterward , Yixing chirping with a physician’s enthusiasm for strange anatomies . The variety of things that lived in the sea was startling, and Chanyeol seemed to know the names of them all. Jongdae found his fingers itching for his sketchbook and pencil .

When Jongdae crouched to peer at one lantern-eyed, toothy thing from a different angle, Chanyeol grinned. He pulled a small notepad from a pocket and presented it with a flourish. Jongdae laughed.

“You’ve now convinced me of the superiority of Tirian coats,” he said , and squeezed Chanyeol’s hand in thanks.

“You’ll be here the rest of the day, Chanyeol,” Yixing said . “I’ll take this as my cue to make my way toward my spouses.”

It was too hot for Jongdae to sketch as long as he wanted to, surrounded by such strange sights.  When he looked up, Chanyeol was perched on a barrel, watching him.

“I keep making you wait for me while I sketch,” he said.

“ I get to watch you, I don’t mind ,” Chanyeol said with a shrug.

How short a time ago it would’ve been that Jongdae would’ve heard that as pressure, or flirting, and let it make him go stiff and watchful. He was glad to understand better now.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

Chanyeol was quiet on the ride back, but each time Jongdae looked over, he was smiling .

Even the invisible servants had been given the  day off: the house would be empty when they arrived. Minseok might think it a shame that he remained unready to take advantage of that.  Even knowing how he edged ever closer.

“Oof, it’s hot,” Chanyeol said while they unsaddled and wiped down the horses . “I think I’ll go for a swim. Are you  off to your studio?”

Even as full as his mind was of  slippery bodies, fins, and staring eyes, Jongdae for once didn’t want to be  a lone.

“No, I’ll join you,” he said.

Chanyeol had two thin boards in his hands when Jongdae met him in the hallway, with rounded edges, each as long as an arm.

“Here’s something you can’t do in your Viridanian pond,” Chanyeol said,  walking out into the surf with one of them and watching for some signal in the waves.

Whereupon he jumped  into the wave with the board under his chest and seemed to float over the top of the wave, until he washed up in front of Jongdae, then flopped over onto his back and grinned through his face full of seawater.

Astounding. Jongdae wondered whether he would’ve been so disturbed by the restlessness of the ocean when they first arrived, had he known  the heart-pounding rush of  riding atop the crest of a wave. It took practice to get the timing right, and Jongdae  plunged into the water plenty of times, but just often enough, he was able to hang on and sail a bit, laughing while the waves tried to tug the board from his hands.

“My father doesn’t even need a board, he can make himself stiff enough to  ride the waves alone, but I’ve never gotten the trick of it,” Chanyeol said.

“One of the secrets of reigning, obviously,” Jongdae said.

“Obviously.”

Chanyeol looked behind him.

“Oh,  here comes  a big one,  watch  out,” he said, and tugged Jongdae toward him just as a  large wave hit, breaking across Chanyeol’s shoulders in a riot of foam and noise.

Jongdae, instead of getting smacked in the head by fast-moving water, found his face perfectly dry in th e space under Chanyeol’s chin. He lost his footing briefly and pressed against Chanyeol as the water moved back out to sea. Chanyeol shook water out of his eyes.

“Tide’s coming in,” he said. “It’ll get rougher now. Did you get hit?”

“No, but I think I’m done for today,” Jongdae said.

Chanyeol walked out of the water with him . Jongdae watched him remove his shirt, wring it out, and drape it across his shoulders. The sun was still hot, but the water had been cold; Jongdae  put his hat back on and spent a while simply relishing the sensation of thawing in the sun, being tired and content.

“I enjoyed that,” he said. “You should definitely show that to Min and Baekhyun.”

“I’m glad,” Chanyeol said, sounding quiet.

And then, several minutes later,

“Jongdae.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you for not hating me.”

Jongdae turned to look at him; Chanyeol was picking at his wet trousers , hair dripping down onto the sand. Terrible posture, for a prince, hunched over like that, with sand all over his bare feet, hardly dressed at all , with his hair looking as if was going to dry in a tangle over his freckled face.

Affect ion rolled through Jongdae like a wave. It wasn’t anything like love yet , but he was satisfied.

“What did you think I’d hate?”

Chanyeol glanced up , away again. 

“Shuddering deeps, all of it, I suppose. Though I meant, um, Min. ”

Jongdae laughed and put his arms around his knees.

“I can’t control Min,” he said.  “If I had really hated the idea, he would’ve waited, but  his kissing you became inevitable the instant he found out you like men. ”

Chanyeol made a sound that sounded like an unfortunate mixture of a choke, a laugh, and perhaps a snort of disbelief that couldn’t possibl y have felt good. He hunched down even lower afterward . Jongdae was just about to reach out, to tell him not to feel shy, when Chanyeol said,

“Do you think – someday – you might want to kiss me?”

Jongdae didn’t know whether Minseok or Baekhyun would be more smug about all this. But really. No one could hold out against such  sweet bravery – not in this beautiful place, with that house behind them . He would raze Arienne to ashes if  its queen  ever bothered his husband again.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol whispered to his ankle.

“Then I suppose today will do,” Jongdae said.

By the time  Chanyeol realized the import of that statement, Jongdae was already at his side . By the time he was done smiling, Chanyeol was on his back in the sand, with Jongdae crouched over him.

“Oh,” Chanyeol breathed. “Hello.”

He was sweet and melting under Jongdae’s mouth, both of them tasting of salt , with sand rough on both their lips. Jongdae had to smile, recognizing how he himself kissed, having been taught by the same source . He  wrapped  his hand firmly against the back of Chanyeol’s neck and felt him open his mouth wider , laughed into Chanyeol’s mouth and kissed him hard. Chanyeol’s hands curved over the backs of his thighs, and  Jongdae shivered with the delicious though t of those hands all over and in him.

“Jongdae of Viridan, I’m furious,” Minseok said  some time later from above them, sounding not furious at all. “You made me wait a month.”

Jongdae peered up into his grin.

“ Chanyeol’s much sweeter than you are,” he said. “You ’re somewhat menacingly attractive. Also, at the time you were trying to  lure me in, I didn’t know anything about cocksucking.”

Jongdae felt a twitch under where he sat and grinned down at Chanyeol.

“Fair enough,” Minseok said.  “What do you say we rinse off all this sand and  go  see about some of that?”

“I love it,” Jongdae said.

♕♕♕

Midwinter Festival, Viridan

“ How can a spouse so large just disappear?” Jongdae complained.

“Have you checked his bedroom?”

Jongdae glowered . That he did so wearing  only  a large shirt and one sock rather lessened the effect.

“Why  would he be in there? He never sleeps in there , why can’t he get ready in here with us?”

Minseok took advantage of the availability of shaving soap and a razor to not dignify that complaint with an answer. He was unsurprised that Jongdae  stared at him, stomped  his socked  foot, and disappear ed in the direction of the sitting room.

He was even less surprised that neither of his spouses had returned by the time he finished shaving. He wiped his face and  went in search of  them.

They were hardly difficult to find :  the room  was large and chilly, and  Chanyeol was thin-blooded, used to heat.  They were in the canopied bed, whose curtains rustled with movement , making themselves warm.

A shirt, a sock, and a  rust-colored velvet robe lay on the floor. Minseok added a pair of  warm knit leggings to the pile and climbed in.

One of the advantages of loving an artist was how _visual_ they were. One of the first things Jongdae had done when they arrived in Viridan together was fix a small lamp to the wall; it was lit, so Minseok could see Chanyeol gazing up at Jongdae with wide eyes, hands grasping the headboard.

“ We’ll maintain our reputation for being late to everything, I see,” Minseok said.

“It’s Chanyeol’s fault ,” Jongdae said.  “He looks so soft when he’s asleep , I can’t keep my hands off him.”

“I’m not sorry,” Chanyeol said , and tipped his head back, bit his lip.

“Tell me what’s going on, Yeollie,” Minseok said as he slid closer under the blankets .

“Dae’s got three fingers in me,” Chanyeol gasped. “I’m just about ready .”

“Isn’t he good to you,” Minseok murmured , kissing Chanyeol’s cheek.

“Always.”

He leaned over to kiss Jongdae, one hand on Jongdae’s chin, knowing Chanyeol watched.  Half a year in, he still watched them so eagerly . Let them have him any way they wished. Held them while they had each other.  What a half-year it had been, watching the way that  Jongdae allowed Chanyeol into his world and the way Chanyeol gave himself to them.

“Turn over, Yeol,” Jongdae said.

“Here, I’ll keep your front half warm,”  Minseok said .

Chanyeol turned into Minseok’s arms. Minseok lifted his chin . While Chanyeol kissed his neck, he watched Jongdae grin down at Chanyeol’s back, run his hands over all that  freckled  skin , kiss over Chanyeol’s spine.

“Ready, love?” Jongdae asked.

“Let me see you,” Minseok said.

He never tired of the way Chanyeol’s eyelids fluttered and he got the tiniest crease between his brows when either of them entered him .  Never tired of how sloppy Chanyeol’s kisses got when he was overcome.

“Ah, yes,” Jongdae said. 

He rolled the bottle of oil toward Minseok’s hand before he started to move . Minseok put it to use,  on his own hand and Chanyeol’s. Their knuckle s knocked together  while they stroked each other; Minseok smiled with his mouth against Chanyeol’s neck.

“Tell me,” Minseok said, and bit down.

Chanyeol groaned his name, and Jongdae laughed once .

“Do you need me to turn the lamp out so you can tell me?”

“No,” Chanyeol gasped. “No, Min. I can do it.”

Minseok grinned at Jongdae over Chanyeol’s shoulder. Bit by bit, they were working the shyness out of their sweet husband , if he was willing to speak where he could be seen.

“Tell him,” Jongdae said.

“Gods, Dae, your fat cock,” Chanyeol groaned, “splitting me in half, it’s so good.”

Minseok arched up and  laughed with delight, tugged faster so that Chanyeol  dropped his head forward .

“ Is it how you want it?”

“More,” Chanyeol said, muffled by Minseok’s hair.

“More what?”

“Faster.”

“ Will you fuck him faster, Dae?”

“I’ll come if I do.”

“Yes,” Chanyeol said, and raised his head. “Come in me, Jongdae, please.”

Minseok couldn’t imagine that this part would ever grow old for him – watching  his loves go to pieces together. He pulled Chanyeol’s cock with one hand and his hair with the other , until Chanyeol’s whimpers turned into a hoarse, sobbing cry and he struggled against Minseok’s hold,  making a sticky mess on Minseok’s belly. He watched Jongdae’s expression go  focused , and he grabbed Chanyeol’s shoulder before his own sharp cry rang out.

Arriving in Viridan  to live in the palace  just in time for the winter social season after a third-year left to their own devi ces in their seaside house had them all  snatching moments together whenever a quiet corner could be found or an appointment put off.  Minseok knew they were the object of a great deal of gossip and laughter. The gossip papers tended to use the word “besotted.”

Chanyeol stirred, lips on Minseok’s head, fingers trailing down his arm.

Three sharp knocked sounded, followed by the door opening.

“I drew the short straw, which seems unfair, I don’t think the newly engaged should have to perform odious duties,” Sehun called out. “But you’re late to dinner , and people are starting to ask for you.”

“Sorry, Hunnie, Min hasn’t come yet,” Chanyeol  said.

He looked down ,  grinning wide . Minseok laughed. Working his shyness out of him indeed.

“We’re definitely going to be a while,” Jongdae said.

“Ugh, you’re all awful,” Sehun said. “It won’t even do any good to think up an excuse for you, everyone  _ knows _ .”

They heard the door  slam shut.

Jongdae pushed Chanyeol to the side so they could each work one side of Minseok’s neck at the same time.

“I suppose we could hurry if you’re  hungry,” Jongdae said.

“Only for the two of you,” Minseok said, and gave himself up to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaaand Soft Hours are done!
> 
> Thanks for reading, everyone! I'll be back with some smut later.


End file.
